Speaking via video conference from a sparsely decorated home office in Newark, she explained that investing in music, and focusing on minority artists, has been a focus of her life for decades. Her application to the Harvard Business School, she said, included a proposal for an investment platform to support artists of color.
“I wanted to impact how the world saw people like me,” she said, “and the fastest way to do that is through content, because it travels to places you and I can’t go with our hands and our feet.”
The music world, too, has very few Black women in high-ranking roles. A study this year by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that, among 4,060 top executives at record companies, streaming services and other firms at the core of the music business, there were 17.7 white male executives for every Black female one.
Clarke Soares, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley who was most recently the chief executive of Tempo Music Investments, another private equity-backed investment firm, declined to say what deals she was going after with her new company.
But she suggested that she may be looking at sectors that have attracted less attention or been undervalued. While there have been no shortage of deals for the work of artists of color — just this week, BMG announced an agreement for Tina Turner’s music rights — the biggest splashes have been made over iconic white artists like Dylan, Simon and the band Aerosmith. Catalogs outside that mainstream can be valued at lower financial levels by investors.
“We want to invest differently, not colored by preconceived notions,” Clarke Soares said. “Just because something is in the RB sector, or in the Latin sector, we don’t believe that it should have a discount.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/arts/music/sherrese-clarke-soares-harbourview.html
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