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Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan

Scott Everett for NPR

As college students in the late 1980s, Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan launched two projects that came to define their trajectories as entrepreneurs: the "punky but poppy" band Chunk, and the scrappy record label, Merge.

For decades, the partners juggled the demands of managing their own band while negotiating record deals and recording dates for other indie artists. But the two worlds also collided in happy ways: touring in their own band was a great way for Mac and Laura to discover new talent, and they also learned that musicians tend to trust a label more if its founders play in a band.

Today, Chunk is still going strong as Superchunk, and Merge has morphed into one of the most influential labels in indie music, with bands like The Mountain Goats, Spoon, and Arcade Fire.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Guy Raz is an independent producer who has been described by the New York Times as "one of the most popular podcasters in history."
J.C. Howard
J.C. Howard is a producer for TED Radio Hour and How I Built This with Guy Raz. He started with NPR as an intern for How I Built This in May 2018 and began producing in his current capacity in January 2019.
Neva Grant
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