German Copyright Organizations

German Copyright Organizations

19 December 2004


GEMA

info also in english GEMA is the German "Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte" or society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights. GEMA helps you to easily obtain all rights entailed in the use of music.
We pass on your royalty payments to the composers, lyricists and music publishers. The GEMA makes no profit: all earnings minus administrative costs are payed to domestic and international authors whose works were performed.
They will collect monies for Mechanical Royalties directly from the record plant and then return that money to the author/composer. If you are both the label and the author then this can be a bit amusing or annoying as you might as well have kept the money to start with. Monitoring of the German airwaves is excellent (for Performance Royalties, and non-German authors can expect to actually see money sent via GEMA to their own organization (BMI etc.)