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Using music for commercial purposes: GEMA fees for company parties & more

Junger Mann tanzt im blauen Hemd durch den Büro Flur.
An ideal team member

Popular and versatile. Music in offices.

Whether you say thanks to your staff at office parties, there is a company anniversary in the diary or you present a new product to your customers, the one thing that you cannot do without to make the event a lively one is: music!

However, this does not just apply to office parties, music can also take on an important role in your company everyday life; this can be in videos on your website, to entertain your callers with music on hold or just as background music in your premises.

So that the creators of the musical works played are not left empty-handed, there’s us, GEMA. If you use music for commercial purposes and notify us accordingly, you thus also ensure that music creators are fairly remunerated for their work.

Music for company events

From solemn to exuberant: Music gets you into the right mood.

Are you planning a closed event (i.e. a company Christmas Do) and want it to have an entertaining character?  Whether you intend to create a cozy atmosphere or a boisterous party: You can set the desired mood using the right music. The licence to get the permission to play what you want is issued by us, GEMA.

The fees depend on your overall costs for the music (artists’ fees, expenditure for stage and technology, etc.) and the number of guests. When it comes to a company event, you often do not have the opportunity to re-allocate the cost for your event to your guests. In order to take such costs into consideration, we divide the net expenditure by the number of guests. For our calculations, we use 100 sqm as the room size for 150 guests each.

Is your event also streamed online additionally or exclusively? If this is the case, you need a separate licence. The basis for the calculation is the net income (also from advertising, sponsoring, donations etc.), the event duration and the music share in each case.

Frauen und Männern unterhalten Catering und Getränken in der Hand.
Angestellte unterhalten sich an einem Tisch umgeben von grünen Pflanzen.

Well-attuned customers by perfectly tuned music.

You place a lot of importance to a welcoming atmosphere. Whenever your customers have to wait, you want to ensure their time is as comfortable as possible. Music is a major contributing factor to this. Whether you use relaxed sounds in your telephone waiting loops, or entertain your customers in your office space with a TV, or want to add background music to your website: you get the rights for this directly from us, from one source. When you have a GEMA licence, you can play music that both your customers and staff love.

This is how you register commercial music in the GEMA Online Portal

  1. Determine the price for your office party, background music etc. *.

  2. Log on to/register for the Online Portal. 

  3. Enter data and complete your notification.

*This is how you can make specific searches for “office party” in our price calculator.

The most important GEMA tariffs for companies

My company event is restricted to a closed group / group of invited persons only. Why do I have to pay GEMA?

Only invited guests attend your event. Or you simply have a party with your staff. No persons outside your company have access. Is this therefore a private function? Not in the eyes of copyright law.  According to it, each music performance is deemed to be public if not all of the people attending it are in a personal relationship, in other words relatives or friends of the event organiser. For music that you play at a private party, for example, a birthday party or at home with your friends, you do not have to pay GEMA fees.  Company events, however, are deemed to be public. 
Personen sitzen auf einer Dachterasse mit Getränken und essen Burger.

FAQs - frequently asked questions by companies to GEMA

For live streaming of your event, we offer you a licence as part of our tariff VR-OD 15. Apart from the live transmission, viewers can also stop the stream and rewind.

If you wish to enable users to retrieve your streams during a longer period, e.g. in the form of music on your homepage, you can also acquire a licence via tariff VR-OD 10.
Hybrid events take place on site and online. In other words, they are two different types of “public” and thus two different kinds of tariffs are involved. This is why you notify us of the event on site (U-V or M-V) and online (VR-OD-15).

In the public performance and communication to the public sector, we have a so-called collection mandate from the following collective management organisations:

  • Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten (GVL) for the rights of performing artists.
  • Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort (VG Wort) for the rights of written word authors / journalists
  • Corint-Media (formerly VG-Media) for the entitlements of private radio and TV broadcasters. 
In our licensing invoices, the licensing amounts for the a.m. collective management organisations are shown separately.
A rebate of up to 20% will be granted to you as a music user if you are a member of an association with which we have an agreement.
 
A precondition for rebates is that you stick to the requirements set out in the tariff or the agreement.
 
You can inform us of your membership of such an association via the GEMA Online Portal mitteilen. If the confirmation of the association for your membership reaches us in time, we can take the general agreement rebate into account.

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