The Dutch Rock & Pop Institute (Dutch : Nationaal Pop Instituut, NPI) was a centre for the Dutch popular music culture. Established since 1975, the Dutch Rock & Pop Institute was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Culture to promote Dutch music at home and abroad. Apart from pop and rock, it also promotes hip hop, urban, dance, crossover, roots and world music. The institute also decides about subsidies for Dutch music venues. Nowadays the institute cooperates with other Dutch music centers as Music Center the Netherlands.
The Dutch Rock & Pop Institute is involved in various international activities, either as originator or as a partner. In 2001 in conjunction with the Conamus Foundation it launched the campaign musicXport.nl, which stimulates the promotion of Dutch music in neighbouring Germany. Due to budget cuts by the Dutch government, the campaign has temporarily been put on hold. The Dutch Rock & Pop Institute visits conferences abroad as well, including Austin Texas's South By South West, New York's CMJ and Berlin's PopKomm.
The Media Centre of the Dutch Rock & Pop Institute is the source of information on pop music from the Netherlands. The Multimedia Centre contains a large collection of books, magazines and sound carriers. The main focus of the Multimedia Centre is on Dutch pop music. However, the collection of books and magazines also contains all important international titles.
FRET is a free publication about the pop music scene in the Netherlands. It contains interviews, reviews, a gig guide and background information about Dutch bands and artists. This Dutch-language magazine is available at record stores and venues in the Netherlands.
The institute gave Dutch venues for live pop music the status of mainvenue. That status could result in a subsidy and extra support and standing. The capacity of the venue was leading for an A-, B- or C-status.
There are 45 venues with a status. Among the seven mainvenues with an A-status are:
Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands with a population of 872,680 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Found within the province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", attributed by the large number of canals which form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country primarily located in Western Europe and partly in the Caribbean. It is the largest of four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In Europe, the Netherlands consists of twelve provinces, bordering Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with those countries and the United Kingdom. In the Caribbean, it consists of three special municipalities: the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. The country's official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland, and English and Papiamento as secondary official languages in the Caribbean Netherlands. Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish are recognised regional languages, while Sinte Romani and Yiddish are recognised non-territorial languages.
Rotterdam is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, at the mouth of the Nieuwe Maas channel leading into the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea. Its history goes back to 1270, when a dam was constructed in the Rotte. In 1340, Rotterdam was granted city rights by the Count of Holland. The Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area, with a population of approximately 2.7 million, is the 10th-largest in the European Union and the most populous in the country.
The Hague is a city and municipality on the western coast of the Netherlands on the North Sea, the administrative and royal capital of the Netherlands and the capital of the province of South Holland. It is also the seat of government of the Netherlands and hosts the International Court of Justice, one of the most important courts in the world.
Utrecht is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Netherlands; it had a population of 357,179 as of 2019.
The culture of the Netherlands is diverse, reflecting regional differences as well as the foreign influences built up by centuries of the Dutch people's mercantile and explorative spirit. The Netherlands and its people have long played an important role as centre of cultural liberalism and tolerance. The Dutch Golden Age is popularly regarded as its zenith.
The Netherlands has multiple musical traditions. Contemporary Dutch popular music is heavily influenced by music styles that emerged in the 1950s, in the United Kingdom and United States. The style is sung in both Dutch and English. Some of the latter exponents, such as Golden Earring and Shocking Blue, have attained worldwide fame.
The University of Amsterdam is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). Established in 1632 by municipal authorities and later renamed for the city of Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam is the third-oldest university in the Netherlands. It is one of the largest research universities in Europe with 31,186 students, 4,794 staff, 1,340 PhD students and an annual budget of €600 million. It is the largest university in the Netherlands by enrollment. The main campus is located in central Amsterdam, with a few faculties located in adjacent boroughs. The university is organised into seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Science, Law, Medicine, Dentistry.
Leiden University Libraries is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment. This was due particularly to the simultaneous presence of a unique collection of exceptional sources and scholars. Holdings include approximately 5,200,000 volumes, 1,000,000 e-books, 70,000 e-journals, 2,000 current paper journals, 60,000 Oriental and Western manuscripts, 500,000 letters, 100,000 maps, 100,000 prints, 12,000 drawings and 300,000 photographs. The library manages the largest collections worldwide on Indonesia and the Caribbean. Furthermore, Leiden University Libraries is the only heritage organization in The Netherlands with three registrations of documents in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
Paradiso is a Dutch music venue and cultural centre located in Amsterdam.
The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) was a cultural institute for architecture and urban development, which comprised a museum, an archive plus library and a platform for lectures and debates. The NAI was established in 1988 and was based in Rotterdam since 1993. It ceased to exist in 2013, when it became part of Het Nieuwe Instituut.
EYE Film Institute Netherlands is a film archive, museum, and cinema in Amsterdam that preserves and presents both Dutch and foreign films screened in the Netherlands.
Music Center the Netherlands (MCN) is an organization that promotes and archives Dutch professional music. It aims to strengthens the position of Dutch music and music culture in the Netherlands and abroad. It organizes events and informative meetings, workshops, courses; publishes promotional CDs; and attends international music fairs and conventions. It is financially supported by the Dutch government.
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD, previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times. All of this is open to the public, and much of it has been digitized and is available on their website. The main goal of the bureau is to collect, categorize, and make art research available, most notably in the field of Dutch Masters.
Dutch rock is a form of rock music produced in the Netherlands, primarily in the English language as well as in Dutch.
The Effenaar is a music venue in the centre of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. It was squatted in 1971 and has grown into one of the largest pop venues in the country, hosting rock, pop and techno events. The current Effenaar consists of two music halls after being renovated between 2002 and 2005. The large hall has an audience capacity of 1300, is intended for use by larger bands and acts and is considerably larger than the original hall. The small hall has a capacity of 400 and is used for smaller and/or regional bands.
The Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) is an international institution based in Amsterdam focusing on the presentation, research and collection of Media Art.
The Royal Tropical Institute, Dutch: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen (KIT) is an applied knowledge institute located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that works to build inclusive societies.
As of 2018, Wolters Kluwer ranks as the Dutch biggest publisher of books in terms of revenue. Other notable Dutch houses include Brill and Elsevier.