In a highly surprising move (at least to me), NewAgeReporter.com has announced that it is going to change its name to ZoneMusicReporter.com.

This is the statement on the NAR homepage:

On August 15th, 2009 NewAgeReporter.com will be changing its name to ZoneMusicReporter.com.

All links to our site will automatically be directed to ZoneMusicReporter.com.

And more:

We have many reasons for wanting to change the name of our site and have considered it for quite a long time. We will still support New Age music as we always have and hope that this change helps to improve the exposure for the industry.

We have no intentions of ending the New Age chart but we are also looking at expanding the mix of music associated with our site. Hopefully this too helps “cross-pollenate” the music on this site with other genres such as World, Singer/Songwriter, Folk, Smooth Jazz and other types of shows. If this approach results in any genre other than New Age becoming too heavily weighted then we would strongly consider splitting into multiple charts – one New Age and whatever other one would make sense.

I am – like most of you I guess – unsure what to make of this. Is it just a name change and business as usual after August 15th? That might be so, but I fear that this will not the case. New age music is in many ways a fragile genre, as stated above. It of course needs and deserves a chart of its own, and a page of its own too!

I understand that the NAR Crew wants to review other music. Some of its members have been reviewing new age music for 10-15 years. But in a time where identity is becoming more and more important on the net, it is surprising to see that a loved and popular web page like NewAgeReporter.com want to lose its uniqueness. There are plenty of music review pages for the other genres. Just Google and you’ll see.

I am writing this because I love NewAgeReporter.com and I don’t want it to go away. As a new age music fan, blogger and radio host I have been visiting the site daily since 2002. Now I can only say thank you NAR and best of luck. It has also been a great inspiration to us at NewAgeMusic.nu.

Friends asked me, “What is new age music all about”? I used to say: “check out NewAgeReporter.com and you’ll see”.

After August 15th I am afraid that I can’t do that anymore.

Check out NewAgeReporter.com.

(You might add that this is not something entirely new from NewAgeReporter.com though. I remember that the old tag line was “Serving the World Music Community”. Now they want to serve even more genres I guess).

Note: That NAR and we at .nu now have the David Wahler album on top is a coincidence.