Meet Equasta White, Clarion Group’s CEO. She is a rising star in the next generation of music managers and the subject of the latest profile on the team at indie music trading group A2IM.
Guest contribution by A2IM
Equasta White has been in the artist management / label services industry for over 5 years. As CEO of The Clarion Group, she is one of our first group of BIMA fellows.
In addition to her work at The Clarion Group, she also works in the radio services / advertising and marketing industries for a Cincinnati-based, I listen to music, Inc.
Read more about Equasta’s career below and follow her on Instagram and Twitter and The Clarion Group on Twitter and Instagram.
Equasta leverages her BS in Psychology, Masters in Business Management and 15+ years of corporate experience to help manage artists, client needs and business processes.
She’s just finished with her Music supervision certification from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. She is an active certified member of the Pragmatic Institute with formal Project Management Institute & Six Sigma training / experience.
She is also a member of Women in Music, the global nonprofit promoting women in the music industry and the Guild of Music Supervisors, and the Dallas Film Makers Alliance. She also represents the Clarion Group as a research participant in the Open Music Initiative, which the Berklee College of Music is not adopting.
Tell us about your company, The Clarion Group!
The Clarion Group is based in Dallas, TX and focuses on artist / producer / composer management / consulting and label services. The Clarion Group was directly involved in the development and publication of artist projects in the genres Gospel and Christian Hip Hop / Rap and R & B / Rap / Hip-Hop / Latin.
I am also a product developer and event manager, whose skills are very well suited to prepare artists for the “go-to-market”, identify their niche fan base and receive support from the media, radio and influencers at home and abroad in an authentic way organic way.
Are there any projects you’re working on or company updates you’re looking forward to the most?
Our company has an incredible passion for metadata, clean data analysis and music technology innovations (e.g. AI, Open API) in music. We have found that the importance of metadata and data encoding is out of focus for independent artists, boutique labels that don’t have a major label team overseeing their operations. So, we’re just about to start Metadata dog. It is a new product / service for artists, composers, and labels that are essentially preparing them to monetize their music through appropriate data encoding.
Is there a success story or career milestone that you are particularly proud of?
In the music industry, there are many unspoken rules and formats that artists must follow in order to stand out from fans and executives and get attention. Our company has developed a strategy that is against the rules and allows some of our artists to accept their music in multiple genres that are usually not open to music that is outside of their norm.
It was also a milestone to see our artists gain significant fan engagement and organic growth in international markets based on data and trend analysis research we conducted on various music and social media platforms.
What do you do besides work?
I love traveling abroad and studying historical cultures, I’m also a concert junkie. I enjoy predicting music trends and album releases. Obsessed with space travel, I watch reruns of The Office, King of The Hill, and Star Wars.
Would you like to add anything else?
Artists should understand that music publishing / touring / performing alone does not make a sustainable and successful career possible. You need to diversify your skills and make sure you can work remotely or collaboratively with others in case you are unable to perform at your best. Sometimes YouTubers don’t feel like creating or performing, but life goes on, so you need to be able to stay relevant with your other talents and gifts and make them part of your overarching business strategy. If you need help with that, our brand will help you plan for the future.
Do you or someone you know fit the bill? Submit an executive here.
About A2IM:
A2IM is a 501 (c) (6) nonprofit trading organization headquartered in New York City that supports and empowers the independent music sector. Membership currently includes a broad coalition of more than 700 independent American music labels. A2IM represents the interests of these independent small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill and as part of the global music community. In doing so, it supports an important part of America’s creative class that represents America’s diverse musical heritage. Billboard Magazine identified the independent music label sector as 37.32 percent of the US record market in 2016 based on copyrights, which together makes independent labels the largest sector in the music industry.
Learn more about A2IM here and contact our team at [email protected] to join now
Owen Davie on 3/9/2021 in Indie Labels | Permanent link | Comments (0)
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/OR4ENKIGRNLQXDTK4Q5BMK7JNY.jpg "U.S. banking regulators engaged on local weather threat administration steerage, official says")
