Mac McCaughan, co-founder of Merge Records and Superchunk, discusses opening for the DC punk band Fugazi early in their career.
Insight
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”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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…”
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McCaughan: Indie labels can't scale permanent operations for rare blockbuster albums
“We go into things trying to keep a rein on, you know, how much money we're spending, because it's the band's money, too, you know? And so, for better or worse, that does put us in a position of not having made the 50,000 records that we could have sold from th…”
Insight
McCaughan: Mainstream music listeners do not care about record labels
“When a record gets as big as, or a band gets as big as Arcade Fire, there's a percentage of people that know what label that record is on, but there's a much bigger percentage of people that don't know and don't care, like, even what a record label is.”