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Ballance: Merge Records survived by growing slowly and avoiding big goals

Laura Ballance · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · Dec 6, 2021 · at 1:13:17

Laura Ballance, co-founder of indie label Merge Records, explains how their conservative growth strategy enabled the company's 30-year survival.

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“I think that our strategy has always been to be careful and grow slowly, and we've never had big goals on the long term, and I think that has served us well in a way, because we, we've been cautious enough to avoid, in general, overextending ourselves.”

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