GEMA Rattles More Cages

Having publicly fallen out with the German concert promoters over its bid to hike the live performance royalty to 10 percent, GEMA – the authors’ rights organisation – has followed the U.K.’s PRS and got in to a stalemate with YouTube.

Last month, YouTube pulled music videos in the U.K. after failing to reach an agreement with PRS for Music, the British rights collection society.
The Google-owned video site has now blocked music videos on its German site because it can’t reach a new agreement with GEMA.

“Negotiations about the extension of the agreement have failed so far because YouTube is not willing to fulfill GEMA’s requests for more transparency relating to the used musical repertoire,” said GEMA chief exec Harald Heker, who was booed by promoters at this year’s German Live Entertainment Awards in Hamburg Feb. 25.

“YouTube wants the extension to the license on the basis of a flat fee without sufficient information provided to GEMA about the used repertoire and the number of streams,” he explained. He said GEMA refuses this offer because, without the detailed information, it’s impossible to calculate a fair way of sharing the revenues among its members.

Apart from the German collection society not knowing how to distribute future income, GEMA and YouTube are also reportedly miles apart on how much each stream should cost.