Music business accountant Mike Skeet has called for more recognition of his profession from the industry.
Skeet (pictured, centre) is a partner at London-based firm Skeet Kaye Hopkins, who won the first ever Accountancy Firm Of The Year award at the Music Week Awards last month.
He told Music Week that accountants are “the forgotten people of the music industry”, and said the sector “does a lot more work than people realise behind the scenes”.
Skeet, whose company was nominated alongside CC Young & Co, Hardwick & Morris, Hentons Panayi, MSE and Prager Metis, offered his insight into how to succeed in music business accounting.
“You need to have respect for artistic talent,” he said. “It’s not like being an accountant and dealing with normal business people, artists are different. You have to understand that and accept that.”
You need to respect artistic talent
Mike Skeet
Skeet added: “If we do our job properly, an artist should never have to do something they don’t want to do because they’ve got a tax bill to pay that they can’t afford to pay.”
He said that his business is there to “make sure artists don’t get any financial surprises and that they can go and do what they want to do and not end up having to go out to I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here or whatever it is.”
For the full list of winners from the Music Week Awards 2019 – including Polydor, Atlantic, Dirty Hit, DHP Family and more – click here.
Revisit the best moments from an action-packed night – hosted for the first time by radio legend Jo Whiley – click here.
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