GEMA stands for Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte.
The GEMA is responsible for managing the rights of composers, songwriters and music publishers. As such, it is responsible for collecting the royalties from users of music and re-distributing them to its members, similar to the Performing Right Society (PRS) in the UK.
Using music that is GEMA-registered, eg. at an event or on a website, requires the usage to be registered and paid for. This is usually straight forward for “traditional” events, however some circumstances are more complicated, as we found out last year in the Monday Podcast.
To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:
(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)
