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Music fans at the Southside Festival 2023: concert boom brings record payout for Gema members

Photo: Christoph Schmidt / dpa

An enormous increase in the concert and event business has given the music collecting society Gema its most successful year to date in 2023. More than one billion euros are to be distributed to the rights holders.

“The events market has recovered, concerts are booming, and music enjoyment is very popular,” said Gema. This is reflected in the numbers. 1.082 billion euros would be distributed worldwide this year, after 1.009 billion last year.

Gema was able to increase its total income in 2023 by 99 million euros to 1.277 billion euros compared to the previous year, which is primarily due to the growth in the concert and event business. The corona measures were completely eliminated in 2023 and events could take place again without restrictions. "Concerts and festivals were very popular last year and the increased ticket prices also had an increasing effect on license income," said a spokeswoman.

Licensing in the area of ​​background music also brings gains, for example in bars, restaurants, discos and hairdressers. In addition, earnings from online music use, particularly through new contracts in the video-on-demand sector, have developed positively.

Streaming revenue barely increased

But from Gema's point of view, not everything that glitters is gold: audio streaming has fundamentally changed the global music market. "With an increase of almost ten percent last year, it is the fastest-growing segment in the music industry and now generates the largest share of industry revenue," it said. However, the income from music streaming for Gema's approximately 94,000 members has hardly increased compared to the previous year.

Gema will therefore continue to advocate for a “fair share” in the proceeds from digital music use in negotiations with the digital music platforms and with politicians. This also applies to the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), whose help is increasingly being used in the creative process.

“The global AI music market offers enormous economic potential,” said Gema boss Tobias Holzmüller. The use of musical works must therefore be protected by copyright and remunerated accordingly. “It should not be forgotten that the authors’ works form the basis for this new creativity.”

Christmas markets with goodwill regulations

At the end of last year, taxes on music at Christmas markets caused debate. The organizers complained about significantly increased taxes - even though the tariffs had not increased in price.

According to Gema, only 2.4 million euros of the total revenue of 1.277 billion euros came from licensing public music from all Christmas markets. The Christmas markets were licensed in 2023 as in the previous year. In those cases in which there were increased invoice amounts due to larger event areas, for example, Gema granted goodwill arrangements.

In Germany, Gema represents the copyrights of over 94,000 rights holders such as composers, lyricists and music publishers as well as over two million rights holders worldwide. It distributes the revenue to them when copyrighted songs are played. Pieces of music whose authors have been dead for at least 70 years are royalty-free.

Feb/dpa