With its new partnership with Secretly Group, Merge Records hopes it can better serve its artists.
"Merge artists already know our enthusiasm and love for their music and what they're doing," Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan said. "And I think this will also give them some assurance that every avenue is being explored, and nothing is going to fall through the cracks when there's a big team at Secretly also working on it."
Durham based Merge Records reached a partnership agreement with Secretly Group, a Bloomington, Indiana based organization that puts four record labels and a music publisher under one roof. The deal includes Secretly, which has more than 120 employees, acquiring a 50% stake in the Merge, a Durham-based indie label with fewer than fifteen employees.
"Having the staff and the of the whole Secretly distribution team behind every Merge release is going to be great," McCaughan said. "Both for the Merge staff, because we're a pretty lean operation, and for our artists."
McCaughan said operations within the Durham office will remain largely the same, and he'll be staying on as label president and head of A&R - Artists and Repertoire. The warehouse in Durham will primarily be used to sell directly to customers through Merge’s website, but will no longer need to handle orders shipped to stores and distributors.
"So that will be a little bit of relief for us," McCaughan said.
Label director Christina Rentz, marketing director Jamie Beck, and head of digital Wilson Fuller will remain in their roles. However, Merge co-founder Laura Ballance announced she will leave the label.
"It was never my goal to start a record label when I was 21 and run it for the rest of my life," Ballance said in a press release announcing the partnership. "I have been doing this for 36 years now. Life is short. There are other things I have always wanted to do: make more art, travel for fun, volunteer more, write a book and lots of other things that being so entrenched in running a business does not allow me to do."
Secretly co-founder Phil Waldorf described the deal as a "pinch me" moment that he's dreamed about for three decades. "We looked up to Merge as we started our labels. We are not just fans of the music they've released, but their independent ethos and commitment to being an artist-first company. Becoming a partner in Merge is beyond a dream for me."
Secretly's Ben Swanson added that the "aim is to Merge with the independent ecosystem we've built at Secretly, while preserving what's truly special about what Mac and Laura have built over the past 36 years, such that we can Merge's growth in the decades to come."
Secretly Group was founded in 1996 and consists as a collection of other independent labels Jagjaguar, Dead Oceans, Saddest Factory Records, and Secretly Canadian. These labels represent some of the biggest artists in independent music today, from Bon Iver to Mitski.
