In the next few months we're all going to be bombarded with what, for want of a better phrase, we've termed New Age Music, thanks to the efforts of the good people at A&M, Coda, Canyon and many other companies. But what exactly is New Age, the so-called "anti-frantic alternative"? The definition you get depends very much on who you ask.

Take A&M for a start. They're promoting the Windham Hill label, available on import in the UK for a while but now set for mass distribution. Formed by guitarist Will Ackerman, the label started when 60 people paid $5 each to fund Ackerman's first album in 1976, and now sells three million discs a year from more than a dozen artists.

A&M talk about "instrumental music, a hybrid of contemporary folk, classical and jazz styles". Ackerman himself says "this is music that record stores could not easily categorise... a music that has become personally meaningful to a great many listeners". In fact Windham Hill is big in the jazz charts in the States — jazz seemed to be the closest reference point, although some Windham Hill albums sell ten times more than a popular jazz record.

Windham Hill is marketed through outlets as diverse as record stores, health food shops and florists. As for the term "New Age", Ackerman disowns it for its "connotations of people in health food stores (!), a combination of mysticism, back-to-the-land ideas and idealism. That's not our primary audience".

So what is Windham Hill's primary audience? Apparently it's composed of those between twenty-five and forty-five who find nothing in US radio's selection of heavy metal and bland pop to please them. The Wall Street Journal suggested Ackerman was producing "soft jazz for music lovers who can't stand rock", while others have described it as worthless muzak and as "musically undistinguished".

The fact remains that Windham Hill has two albums by pianist George Winston approaching the half-million sales mark, and is becoming massively influential in the planning of radio station content and record company release schedules.

Windham Hill's repertoire consists almost entirely of instrumental music — piano solos from George Winston, solo or synthesizer-accompanied acoustic guitar pieces from Ackerman, the band Shadowfax and Alex de Grassi, jazzier pieces from Michael Hedges, piano and synthesizer pieces from Mark Isham. The selection on Coda, the UK's answer to Windham Hill, is a little wider, although some of the artists are already familiar to UK audiences.

Take Incantation for instance. Their speciality is South American music played on pan pipes, guitars and percussion instruments, and the success of their first album led to the creation of the "New Age Music Landscape Series".

Fair enough, but we find on the label a disc called "Classic Landscape" by Tim Cross, a set of classical pieces played on synthesizers in a style which has moved on not a whit since the days of Walter Carlos. Then there's Claire Hamill, whose "Touchpaper" album is in the standard Coda catalogue but whose latest album "Voices" appears in their New Age listing. It's a voice-only album with sampling effects, apparently having little in common with Windham Hill's output. There are piano solos (by Dashiell Rae for instance) but the Coda/New Age Landscapes label as a whole seems to treat the idea of New Age in a rather flexible way.

Windham Hill is based in Palo Alto, California. But go as far as central Los Angeles and you'll find a group of people who were using the term New Age Music five years ago and meaning something completely different by it.

Sharing each other's Synclaviers (and sometimes swimming pools) you'll find a little community dedicated to the more "cosmic" side of New Age. French Californian Bernard Xolotl, Greek composer Iasos, American Don Robertson and others use synthesizers with touches of violin, guitar or 'cello to weave simple and extended patterns of sound, great landscapes of synthetic textures intended to hypnotise the listener and soothe away the troubles of the day. Yoga and meditational outlets have been selling cassette albums by these and by others such as Malcolm Cecil for years, the artists having one eye on the lucrative Californian Walkman/jogging market and the other on their German forebears Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.

In Japan, Tomita's synthesized arrangements of popular classics have found new recognition alongside the massive output of Kitaro, a mystic/synthesist who lives on the slopes of Mount Fuji, plays his Prophet 5 to audiences of thousands and turns out almost identical albums with titles such as "From The Full Moon Story" and "Ten Kai" - — many of them derived from TV and film commissions.

New Age artists traditionally start small. American synthesist Michael Garrison has produced four identical albums of simple synthesizer music using up-tempo four-note patterns on his own Windspell label. Total sales — in excess of a quarter of a million albums.

The message is beginning to filter through that, whether you like or dislike New Age music, and even if you can't define it, there's lots of money waiting to be made from it. One approach to these facts would be to re-label existing product as New Age, something small label AMP Records fully intends to do. Their British synthesizer signing Paul Nagle, who has released eighteen cassette albums on an amateur basis, has developed a distinctly English style of instrumental music often influenced by books such as "Lord Of The Rings" or "The Hobbit". Five years ago such music was strictly for fans, a totally non-commercial proposition. Now it's a real contender.

New Age Music is making converts fast, although many of them apparently drift away again in a search for music they feel has a little more content. It really comes down to what you want to use the music for — background effect, lifestyle enhancement or commercial credibility. Now you decide.