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Merge Co-Founder Discusses Arcade Fire's Success

8:48 a.m. · August 12, 2010 · by Nick Neyland

The members of Arcade Fire are proudly sitting atop the charts on both sides of the Atlantic this week after their album The Suburbs exceeded expectations. Now, Laura Ballance, perhaps best known for her work with Superchunk, but also a co-founder of Merge Records, has talked about the successes of her most famous signings.

"The whole chart thing is kind of like sports," she said. "The need to have a ranking is kind of meaningless. I’m more like, ‘It did good? That’s great.’” The album reportedly sold 156,000 copies to claim the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, although Balance plays down the innovative digital packaging of The Suburbs, which includes synchronized artwork and lyrics to each song.

"Nobody knew about it," Ballance said. "The band are fans of doing things under the radar and letting people discover it. We did not promote it as a feature. I think it’s cool. It’s even awesome for a little karaoke." She also gave some insight into Amazon’s pricing structure, which undoubtedly helped shift digital copies of the album when the retailer put them on sale for a mere $3.99.

“Unfortunately, that’s not up to us," she claimed. "Devaluing music is something that concerns me greatly. But it’s hard to draw a hard line on it. At this point, people can download music for free if they really want to. If you’re trying to get people to buy music, people who wouldn’t otherwise, maybe that’s the way to do it.  Just to make it so cheap that it tips the scale.”

[via LA Times]