New Initiatives, New Structure, and a New Website!
As some of you may know, New Amsterdam has recently undergone an extensive restructuring process. Over the course of the last year, New Amsterdam Presents (our parent non-profit entity) has absorbed virtually all current and future record label activity. The result: we are now an all-in-one non-profit record label, presenter and artist service organization. The merging of our presenting and label wings will help create long-term sustainability for our organization in the face of a quickly changing music industry. Although we’ve retained the name New Amsterdam Records, our model, now more than ever, differs greatly from that of traditional record labels. Our support will continue to extend far beyond album distribution, and our artists will continue to retain full ownership of their recordings. However, moving forward, we will be partnering with our artists to share our costs through project-specific fundraising and granting 100% of album sales directly to our artists. This new model will ONLY be successful with public support, both for our organization and the album projects it represents.
In the nine years since we launched our label, we've seen incredible changes in the music industry. When we began, 80% of album sales were from physical CD purchases and 20% were from online downloads. That split soon reversed, and over the past few years digital downloads have plummeted. Streaming income has continued to grow - but those gains account for only a fraction of the income represented by former physical and digital sales. With our extensive experience supporting over 85 uncompromising, unclassifiable albums, it is clear to us that public support is the only way for this music to survive.
As part of our consolidation process, we’ve created a brand new website representing all of our label and presenting activity under one roof: newamrecords.com. The site contains a number of new features, including anexclusive fundraising platform for our artist’s upcoming albums and special projects, centralized social media, detailed performance calendar, info on our new educational initiatives, and new featured collaborator pages. The site navigation has been streamlined, helping fans connect to our music more quickly. And, as always, you can stream the entirety of each and every album on our site before purchasing via Bandcamp.
Please let us know what you think! And very special thanks to Beauchamp Artist Services for doing a wonderful job overseeing the site redesign.