Secretly Group and Merge Records Form Partnership

Secretly Group has acquired a 50% stake in Merge Records, the influential indie label that launched traditional albums by the likes of Impartial Milk Resort, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, and Arcade Fireplace. The partnership extends Merge’s longtime distribution cope with Secretly, bringing the label beneath an umbrella that features its 4 core labels, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, Saddest Factory, and Secretly Canadian.

Talks across the partnership started when Merge co-founder Laura Ballance determined to step down from her function as co-president and go away the music enterprise, in response to a press launch. Her fellow co-founder—and Superchunk bandmate—Mac McCaughan stays label president and head of A&R, and different senior Merge employees will keep in place, a press launch notes.

Ballance wrote of her exit, “It was by no means my objective to begin a report label after I was 21 and run it for the remainder of my life. I’ve been doing this for 36 years now. Life is brief. There are different issues I’ve all the time needed to do: make extra artwork, journey for enjoyable, volunteer extra, write a e book and many different issues that being so entrenched in operating a enterprise doesn’t enable me to do. Merge Data began as a literal bed room label, in my bed room, and lived there for a number of years earlier than we had been in a position to give it some area of its personal. It has all the time been a labor of affection. I’m going to overlook it and all of the folks and bands tremendously.”

McCaughan added, “I’ve recognized most of the folks within the Secretly world for many years, and I do know that they share Merge’s dedication to artists and getting their music into the arms of as many individuals as potential.”

Superchunk’s new album, Songs in the Key of Yikes, out August 22, would be the first Merge report to be distributed worldwide by Secretly, in response to the press launch.