Mac McCaughan
person on 1 show · 8 statements across 1 episodes
On the record as a speaker too: Mac McCaughan across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
8 statements about Mac McCaughan, every show
Ballance: Merge Records would not have survived with two Mac McCaughans
“We fulfill different parts of what the business needs to succeed, and I suspect if you had two Macs running Merge, Merge wouldn't have Kept going.”
McCaughan: You can judge a music demo within 30 seconds
“The good thing is you can often tell within 30 seconds or so whether this is going to be something that you're into or not, you know. Sometimes without even listening to it from the way it's being presented to you can tell, so you're not literally listening to…”
McCaughan: Bands are more open to labels run by fellow musicians
“From the artist relations side, bands are more open to working with the label, knowing that The people running the label are also in a band.”
Ballance: Merge and Superchunk were bigger than their founders' romantic relationship
“I felt like what we had built with Superchunk and Merge was larger than us at the, at this moment when we were splitting up personally. You know, like, it was, it felt like it had, Merge and Superchunk both had a life of their own in a way, and like, us not be…”
McCaughan: Performing well earns artist retention better than contract lock-in
“I mean, our assumption, I think, to this day is that if we're doing a good job, then why wouldn't you want to do another record with us? Though we do use contracts now, but we were taking the handshake deal model from labels like Touch and Go and Discord and l…”
McCaughan: Merge Records initially funded releases by borrowing from friends and family
“We borrowed money from friends and family almost on, like, a per-release basis.”
McCaughan: Record labels represent a shared aesthetic voice, not just manufacturing
“I thought of a label as the kind of aesthetic umbrella of, like, a certain group of artists.
In other words, like, when I thought of record labels, I thought of For AD, or Sub Pop, or Discord, or Teen Beat Records.
Like, they each had their own kind of voice”
McCaughan: 1989 Sub Pop visit was as fans, not to get signed
“One of my friends from school, Aubrey Summers, was friends with them just from growing up, I guess, from high school or something like that, and so it wasn't like, oh, you can get your band signed, it was just more like, we're fans of Mudhoney and Sub Pop, and…”