We are a sports association. Do we have to notify GEMA of our club events?

The most important points in brief:

Club events with music must be registered with GEMA in advance; this also applies to free events, which are usually cheaper. Use the GEMA online portal for this purpose. By the way: Some federal states cover the licensing costs for volunteer organizations.

Yes, you must notify us of your club events. Some may be surprised that clubs and associations must inform us of their music uses, however, the reason for this is simple: We, GEMA, represent the interests of music creators by ensuring that their intellectual property is protected and they are remunerated adequately for the use of their works. After all, composers, lyricists and music publishers must live off something. Did you know? We are also an association. How exactly we function is described for you in our section GEMA at a glance.

Notifications are mandatory for music in public:
Whoever performs or plays music in public, or reproduces music, must pay a remuneration or fee to GEMA. We then pass it on in the form of royalties to our creators (minus the administrative fees). This applies to associations, clubs and volunteers, as much as to event organisers, people in the catering trade and private individuals. An event becomes public when people can attend who have no personal relationship to the event organiser and who do not have a relationship with one another. Association or club celebrations are usually public because the participants are not personal friends or related i.e. they do not have (to have) a personal relationship with one another.

Submit your music notification in time:
If music is to be played at your club event, even just as background music during half-time, please notify us of this use beforehand. It is rather simple to do this via our GEMA Online Portal by clicking on calculate price & register music . What’s important is that we can issue our licence before the event takes place.

Please also notify us of free events:
Even if you do not charge an entrance fee or admission for your association event, you need to send us an event notification. Free events do, however, cost less. The actual level of the fee depends on many factors, such as the type of event, the size of the event location or the actual event space.

Select the appropriate tariff:
Whether you are looking at parades, sport events, club ceremonies or live concerts: We offer a suitable tariff for each of your club events. You can check out further details in our tariff overview.

The State of Bavaria takes over the fees for voluntary associations
The Free State of Bavaria currently takes over GEMA licence fees for voluntary Bavarian associations for up to four club events per year. Find out more about the general solution.

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