Music to our ears: 25 NYC condos with music rooms and recording studios

Despite an abundance of world-famous performance venues, prestigious music schools and conservatories, and highly acclaimed instructors, the perfect practice space for musicians isn't easy to come by in New York City. Close quarters and thin walls of many apartments mean the neighbors aren't likely to be appreciative of the most masterfully played musical instruments early in the morning or late at night. Some residential buildings even have rules saying musical instruments cannot be played during certain hours.

The situation isn't much easier for podcast creators whose only instruments are their voices. On Emmy Award-winning television show Only Murders in the Building, now in its fifth season, the characters are frequently seen recording their podcast in someone's apartment. This can be easy enough to justify due to thick walls in their prewar building, but it's almost never this easy off-screen. The typical New York City podcaster likely has plentiful background noise and interruptions from their own home, neighboring units, and city streets to edit out. Moreover, as a growing number of podcasts embrace video content (YouTube recently overtook Spotify and Apple Podcasts as a platform), there is pressure to look good on camera as well as sound good.

Studio space and practice rooms are available for rent throughout New York City, but the cost can add up quickly, and it is not a given that this will have all the required equipment. It can also be costly to soundproof an apartment. So what's a musician or podcaster to do?

One answer is to look for an apartment in a building with a music room among the amenities. This offers an acoustically engineered space to practice an instrument, host a music lesson, or host a jam session outside of one's apartment. (Reservations are likely recommended, if not required.) Select buildings have made recording studios part of their music rooms, while others have incorporated dedicated podcast rooms into their business centers or made it a completely separate amenity.

Below, we look at buildings with recording studios and music practice rooms among the amenities. A large concentration of such buildings can be found around Lincoln Center, the Juilliard School, and Manhattan School of Music on the Upper West Side. However, as individuals and parents alike increasingly see the benefits of musical training and education, residential developers have begun to incorporate musically-attuned spaces into their buildings all over the city.

Closings at 200 East 75th Street are expected to commence this fall. The building's architecture was inspired by its prewar neighbors, and the amenities by Yellow House Architects were inspired by private Manhattan clubs. They include a parlor lounge, a billiards room with leather accents, a screening room with plush seating, and a music room with recording booth and state-of-the-art sound-mixing equipment.