"Postpone GEMA reform"

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GEMA wants to reform the distribution model for its royalty income. What sounds like an unspectacular development actually has serious consequences for music culture in Germany. This is because the currently rich diversity of newly created music would be put at risk in favour of an increasingly commercialized mainstream.

The German conservatoires are therefore calling on GEMA to postpone the reform. The conservatoires expect the reform to be widely discussed with all those directly affected, including the composers of new music who are hardly represented on the supervisory board, and to consider its consequences for Germany as a music country"said Elmar Fulda, President of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt and Christian Fischer, Rector of the Hochschule für Musik Trossingen and Chairman of the Rectors' Conference of the 24 German music academies in an article published in the FAZ.

The background is as follows:
If only a purely collection-related distribution of GEMA fee income were to be made, as currently planned, i.e. if the reference value were to shift from the work to its use, young composers could hardly hope to become full members of GEMA at some point and benefit from fee income, as their works only have low performance numbers and their minimum income would no longer be sufficient for membership due to the new regulations. Even a prolific composer like Johann Sebastian Bach would then have little chance, as he is known to have composed almost exclusively for the (low-collection) area of church music.
GEMA argues that the separation of serious and light music, i.e. so-called serious and entertaining music, is no longer in keeping with the times. In fact, both areas have always inspired each other, art music has always taken up popular melodies or forms, be it in Mozart, Beethoven, Hindemith or in current electronic music, while the tonality and formal language of art music has found its way into popular music, think of bands like Kraftwerk. For this reason, the conservatoires support an expansion of funding to areas that have previously been considered underground music and have received less support.
The current reform proposal will not improve distributive justice. On the contrary, it would mean that all members would receive less, regardless of whether they are in light or serious music. The conditions for all music creatives would then be, cynically put, the same, namely equally worse. The winners would be the music industry and global corporations. They would receive more. Instead of more distributive justice, this reform would result in a redistribution from the bottom to the top, from the creative low earners to the big exploiters.