Copyright in the music business covers several different income streams, and constitutes a large portion of the overall revenue for the artist-manager entity. Although it contributes to income in a similar way to assets of great magnitude in other industries, it is not only difficult to classify it necessarily as an asset itself, but also ascertain its precise value, thus making a financial assessment of the entity problematic.
Measurement of future benefits from musical copyright, the level by which the artist-manager entity controls it and its scarcity in the market are all elaborate and often abstract in form, raising doubts over the reliability of musical copyright when compared to other income streams.
The value of the artist-manager entity, as with any core business entity, can be viewed as based on its assets less any liability incurred. According to Edwards, Hoggett et. al. in Financial Accounting (7th Edition), those ‘resources controlled by the entity as a result of past events, and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity’ are classifiable as assets to the business, and this concept of control for the entity is key when it comes to the music business and the intellectual property tied to it.