New Music Distribution Service (or NMDS) was a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

record distributor The music industry are individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, represent ...

based in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It was founded in 1972 by

Carla Bley Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she gained acclaim for her jazz opera ''Escalator ...

and

Michael Mantler Michael Mantler (born August 10, 1943) is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music. Career: United States Mantler was born in Vienna, Austria. In the early 1960s, he was a student at the Academy of Music and V ...

as a means of distributing artist produced recordings of, primarily, experimental contemporary music. It was a program of the

Jazz Composer's Orchestra The Jazz Composer's Orchestra was an American jazz group, founded by Carla Bley and Michael Mantler in 1965, to perform orchestral avant-garde jazz. Its origins lay in the Jazz Composers Guild, an organization founded by Bill Dixon which grew out ...

Association (JCOA). The NMDS began by distributing recordings released by many different independent labels and artists, including Nodlew ( Weldon Irvine's label), Jahari ( Richard Dunbar's label), Gibex ( Michael William Gilbert's label),

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

's Chatham Square label, and many others. Several international labels such as

Incus The ''incus'' (: incudes) or anvil in the ear is one of three small bones (ossicles) in the middle ear. The incus receives vibrations from the malleus, to which it is connected laterally, and transmits these to the stapes medially. The incus i ...

and

ECM ECM may refer to the following: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Lenstra's Elliptic curve method for factor ...

were also included in their catalogs. The biggest selling album in NMDS history was the ECM release of

Return to Forever (Chick Corea album) ''Return to Forever'' is a jazz fusion album by Chick Corea recorded over two days in February 1972 but was not released in the USA until 1975—Corea's fourth release for the label. It is the debut of a quintet featuring singer Flora Purim, fla ...

, which strained the seams at the service and led to ECM's first US major distribution deal. The service maintained a philosophy of keeping all labels in stock at all times. Carla Bley remembered being rejected by the gatekeepers at traditional record companies and vowed that NMDS would be non-judgemental for the artists. In 1984, the NMDS was awarded a $10,000 grant by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. Due to the long illness of a manager, and the resultant failure to pay New York state taxes, NMDS suspended operations in 1990.

References

{{Jazz Composer's Orchestra Companies based in New York City Defunct companies based in New York (state)