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Sense of Place: This student-driven Boston label puts artists first

Green Line Record's co-head of artists and repertoire, Ariana Borromeo (left), and label president Michelle Wu.
George Murphy
/
WXPN
Green Line Record's co-head of artists and repertoire, Ariana Borromeo (left), and label president Michelle Wu.

When you think of a record label, what do you picture? You might imagine guys in suits with gold records hanging from their walls, making deals and bilking bands out of their hard-earned money.

Green Line Records is the opposite of all of that.

"We want to provide the resources for emerging artists, I think, because a lot of the times, the actual music industry record labels are very gatekeep-ey," says Michelle Wu, president of Green Line Records. "It's very hard for newer artists to break in."

Green Line is a totally student-run label at Boston's Northeastern University, where the focus isn't on making a profit but uplifting musicians.

As part of our Sense of Place: Boston series, we sat down with Wu to learn more about how Green Line Records puts artists first, how students take a project from start to finish, and what makes a Green Line Records contract very different from those at any other record label.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).