History of New Age Music

While most people think of New Age music as only being music for meditation, that is simply not the case. While the beginnings of this unique style of music certainly included music for meditation, the genre has since grown and expanded to include many other types of sounds. Although it has not reached the same popularity as rock and pop, New Age has a strong group of fans and nearly every record store will have a New Age section that is complete with all of the latest releases. To understand the current state of New Age music, a person must go back and look at how it all got started.

Unlike other genres of music, New Age does not have very clear lines of influence. This is because inspiration came from a number of unlikely sources, such as the acoustic folk of Leo Kottke as well as the psychedelic rock of Pink Floyd. In addition, jazz artists and international electronic groups also made contributions towards what would become the ambient music style. In the early years of New Age that happened at the end of the 1970s, the music had not yet broken into public awareness and the only place where a person could find the records were mixed bookstores, boutiques, and sometimes even health food stores.

The big change for New Age music came in 1981 when Tower Records became the first record store to create a special section for the new genre. In less than five years, the trend spread across the country, with every record store being forced to stock New Age titles due to popular demand. In addition, the major record labels began to take notice and many artists made the jump from small labels to the much larger ones over the next few years. The final apex of the New Age music evolution came in 1987 when the first radio station switched to a completely New Age program.