All the stuff you didn’t learn at music school.

Welcome to Amica Familia. Amica means ‘friend’ in Latin. Amica Familia means ‘Friendly Family’.

Amica Familia is the mentoring and industry skills side of Amica Records, created by Nat Bartsch (artist / producer/ label founder) and Hadyn Buxton (recording/ live audio engineer / educator). Friendly family is who we’d like to be for you.

Think of us as like your favourite distant relative you see at Christmas - the kind, caring one you can talk to about anything; but who’s also pragmatic and honest with you. And they never ask “so how’s your music going” without asking many thoughtful follow up questions!

For more than a decade, the music industry has been undergoing an irreversible transformation. It has never been easier to share music with a global audience. But the economy we are creating in has changed, as have our revenue sources. Digital streaming platforms continue to evolve and ask for more stuff from artists, and it can be hard to keep up! The good news is there are many tasks that artists can now do ourselves, that used to cost substantial money. But it also means more is expected of artists, with less.

It feels as though there is an ever-widening gap between what musicians are learning to do, particularly at elite conservatoriums, and what is actually required in the industry. For most of us, it is not enough to be able to perform, compose or record our best work; we also need to wear many other hats to ensure this music reaches an audience. On any given day we could be also a producer, technical manager, booking agent, graphic designer, copywriter, digital marketer, publicist, grant writer, web design and e-commerce, product distributor, a people person, and more.

The result is that artists can often feel completely overwhelmed by the gaps in their skill set; especially for recent graduates, older artists, artists experiencing disadvantage, and those who have a really full on day job. It prevents artists from completing their projects, or starting them at all, or feeling like they are meant to be in the music industry. So we’d like to try and help!

Between us, we have 35 years of experience figuring out this stuff along the way. Nat is a self-managed pianist and composer of neoclassical, jazz and chamber music. She has self-produced nine albums and released her music in various ways - as an independent artist, a label artist, and label owner. She has developed plans for recordings, scalable live shows and tours that accomodate different budgets, time and technical constraints. She has written countless biographies and press releases, several successful grants, and rolled out her own publicity campaigns. She has already mentored more than 15 artists to help them develop their projects and career goals.

Hadyn has recorded over 100 albums and mixed live shows for artists as diverse as Luke Howard, Uncle Archie Roach and Ecca Vandal. He’s worked with musicians at every career level in almost every genre - and with all kinds of budgets and resources, from major studio sessions to lounge rooms. We both work as tutors in the university system in our areas of composition, improvisation and production - but we also want to help artists with the other stuff. The skills you never knew were needed!

So, we’d like to be some friendly family in the industry for you. To help you not feel so alone as you create and share your music. Just because the tools are there to do it all ourselves, doesn’t make it less overwhelming or easier to navigate.

Sometimes, you need a second opinion on your music, or some new inspiration. Sometimes you need a sense of what’s viable and what’s important. When to scale up, and when to scale down. We’d like to help you create modular, sustainable projects that will help you navigate your career in this ever-changing industry a little better.

And sometimes you just need someone to share your new demos with, right?

We’re here to hang out with you :)

(Pictured: Nat with one of her first mentees, pianist/composer Pat Jaffe. Header photo by Brett Scapin)