Who can become a GEMA member?

• Composers
• Lyricists of lyrics set to music
• Music publishers
• Legal successors of the mentioned groups

Music arrangers and arrangers or translators of lyrics set to music can also become GEMA members. In order for us to manage your copyrights, it is important that your arrangements reflect personal intellectual property. Moreover, you must have an authorisation of the rightsholder of the original work. 

GEMA membership is linked to the individual. A band cannot become a GEMA member. Instead, each band member who is a composer or a lyricist must submit their own membership application. 

Pure musical performers, i.e. performing artists, who are not composers, arrangers or lyricists at the same time cannot become members of GEMA because they are not active as creators. For them, the Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten (GVL) is in charge. 

If you are exclusively active as a producer or a producer of sound recordings, you cannot become a publisher member of GEMA.