Innova Recordings is dedicated to forward-looking (-hearing?) work that pushes and challenges the boundaries of contemporary music. The label's releases are less dictated by record-bin-constraints or typical notions of marketability, but by the integrity of the work, its originality, conceptual richness and technical quality, and the artist's willingness to support and promote the release.

Innova redefines the typical relationship between artist and label. Artist and label work together, taking advantage of each other's strengths, to provide both the tools of an established record label and the freedom usually associated with self-publishing.

Innova is geared towards work that is unlikely to find a home in the mainstream record industry. We focus on world class music—regardless of its genre (or lack of one, even though for convenience we use words like New Classical, Jazz, Experimental, Electronic and World)—that commercial labels overlook. When innova accepts a project it means that we believe not only in the quality of the work but also in our ability to help it reach new audiences. Innova is not a vanity label that accepts all projects; they need to be a good fit with our resources, and we need to be convinced that we can do a better job of promoting and selling the records than artists could do by themselves or via a different route.

Innova has no profit motive. Artists take on the financial risk of releasing their work. As long as we release a minimum number of titles each year, innova stays in business; artist admin fees and our endowment interest subsidize our office of staff members dedicated to each project. This arrangement also allows us to be especially friendly to projects that take artistic risks. We are motivated not by gouging the artist but by wanting to make the world a better place through significant new music.

In other words, it's the artists not the label controlling the purse strings. That's what makes innova truly unique. We help artists shepherd their own careers, and we want their voices heard on both the artistic and the business levels. We promise ubiquity to every release.

Once a project is accepted, we work in partnership with the artists to help them develop their art and make the recording the best it can possibly be. We also work together on the accompanying marketing plan and implement it to reach sales and visibility goals. Records don't sell themselves, but we can keep costs low and put profitable sales within our artists' reach.

Like our parent organization, the American Composers Forum, innova serves artists and their careers. We are part business, part service.

Releasing an album through innova means being part of a team effort - artist and label working together, with no secret agendas and no politics. The music industry is an industry like any other, and profits are its bottom line. As that rarest of birds, a non-profit label, innova has a different bottom line - our artists. Think of us as the great equalizer. Hey, we even got a grant from a Payola legal settlement to make amends to the rest of the usurious industry.

We have a flexible, innovative business model, a different kind of architecture, and offer a supportive environment to artists. Innova is a place to try out new marketing ideas as well as new musical ones. Many of our artists are repeat customers and much new business comes from word of mouth; that makes us proud of our innova family.