Pitchfork

Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Merge Records, the North Carolina-housed indie rock imprint responsible for some of your very favorite music, like, ever.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, the label is delivering a little something they call SCORE! Merge Records: The First 20 Years. Essentially a massive box set, SCORE! will be comprised of a series of 14 compilations of tunes from the entire Merge catalog, curated by some of the brightest lights in and around the arts.

So how do you get yours? Well, SCORE! and its special artwork and packaging will be available by subscription only, with quantities limited to the number of folks who subscribe between September 8 and the January 2008 arrival of SCORE!'s first two volumes. Those initial volumes come courtesy of R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Junebug director Phil Morrison, while future sets will get themselves good and curated by the likes of David Byrne, comedienne Amy Poehler, author Jonathan Lethem, artist Marcel Dzama, chef David Chang, and others. Subscribers will receive volumes throughout 2009.

Each curator will not only pick their favorite jams from Here's Where the Strings Come In, they'll also pick the charitable causes where the proceeds from their compilation will go. What's more, "additional exclusive content" will go to those who subscribe, and announcements regarding more SCORE! related projects are on the way.

Happy birthday, Merge!