"The New York Times" music critic Jon Pareles noted that "new-age music" absorbed other music styles in more softer form, but those same well defined styles don't need the new-age category, and that "new-age music" resembles other music because it is aimed as a marketing niche—to be a "formula show" designated for urban "ultra-consumers" as status accessory, that the Andean, Asian and African traditional music influences invoke the sense of "cosmopolitanism", while nature in the album artwork and sound the "connection to unspoiled landscapes".