The seeds that would grow into New Earth Records were sown in the late 1980s, as the two co-founders traveled the world, studying healing music from Japan, Tibet, India, and Native American and Australian Aboriginal traditions. There was very little healing music widely available at that time, so Bhikkhu and Waduda decided to start their own label in Munich, Germany in 1990, first named Tao Music, later re-named New Earth Records.
The company became one of the first labels to release high-quality meditation, relaxation, and yoga music in the West, helping bring a new kind of sonic mindfulness into millions of homes and businesses.
As Bhikkku and Waduda nurtured their new company, musician friends from all over the world began to reach out, seeking kindred spirits who would help them share innovative music with a wider public. As their family of artists grew, the genre of healing music became more mainstream across the globe.
In the early 1990s, Bhikkhu and Waduda began searching for an ideal home base in the United States. In 1995 they settled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. This enabled New Earth Records to reach an even bigger audience, as yoga, relaxation, and meditation music kept growing in popularity and gaining in global prominence. They later moved the company to Santa Fe, New Mexico, drawn by its cultural diversity, but returned to Boulder in 2012, called back by its unique landscape and eco-conscious lifestyle.
In the early 2000s, the music industry underwent a massive shift from physical to digital formats. Many record labels struggled to make the transition efficiently and to keep up with the changing technology.
Bhikkhu and Waduda, instead, looked carefully ahead and made sure their artists’ music was available in digital format right away. They understood that this novel distribution channel would be key to reach their fanbase in the future, while providing an ever-bigger number of people with easy access to their label’s music.
New Earth Records is a well-respected record label, geared towards providing listeners with fresh top-notch spiritual sounds from around the world, while keeping true to its classic roots.