{"id":373,"date":"2012-11-30T17:06:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/confettidigital.com\/?p=373"},"modified":"2020-07-06T00:37:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T00:37:36","slug":"gema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/confetti-archive\/gema\/","title":{"rendered":"GEMA reportedly crack down on DJs as well as clubs, adding new \u201claptop surcharge\u201d to sets \u2013 FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music."},"content":{"rendered":"

GEMA REPORTEDLY CRACK DOWN ON DJS AS WELL AS CLUBS, ADDING NEW \u201cLAPTOP SURCHARGE\u201d TO SETS<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, GEMA, the body charged with collecting royalties in Germany, announced a\u00a0controversial overhaul of its fee structure.Having historically charged venues a flat rate, GEMA are introducing a system based on the size of the venue and a percentage of ticket prices. GEMA\u2019s original proposal was for events that last more than five hours to weather a 50% surcharge, increased by an extra charge if the party tips over the eight hour mark, though recent negotiations have led to this charge being reduced. The new system is scheduled to come in to force in April 2013. The clubbing community both German and worldwide balked at the changes, with high-profile clubs like Berghain and Watergate [above] claiming that they would be forced to close (Berghain later announced that it would, in fact, be\u00a0staying open).\"\"<\/span><\/span>On June 30, over 2000 German venues cut their music for five minutes by means of protest, and an online petition opposed to the move gathered over 60,000 signatures. Despite this, the\u00a0Deutsches Bundestag \u2013 Germany\u2019s Parliament \u2013 decided at the start of November that it would not intervene,\u00a0suggesting that supporters of the petition \u201cform a compromise with GEMA directly\u201d. When FACT spoke to Nick Hoppner, manager label of Ostgut-Ton (the Berghain\u2019s in-house label) earlier this year, he expressed the view that the clubbing community needed to\u00a0change GEMA from the inside<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span>It now appears that GEMA are attempting to knuckle down even harder on club performances. So far this has only \u2013 to our knowledge \u2013 been reported on\u00a0German language websites<\/strong>, but at the heart of these newly proposed set of changes is a tax (or \u201claptop surcharge\u201d) on DJs playing music from laptops, to the tune of 30% for every music file under five minutes with an increase of 20% for each additional minute. What we\u2019re unsure about is whether this only refers to files that are played, or\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>music on the offending laptop \u2013 we\u2019d presume the former, but the\u00a0post on\u00a0<\/strong>Tanith<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>implies the latter (\u201ce.g. 10,000 mp3s on the DJ laptop would [require] 1,300 Euros\u201d).The proposal has reportedly been negotiated with the German Discotheques and Nightclubs unions (DDU and DDO). Dean Driscoll, of German-based promotions company Tailored Communiation, explained on Twitter this morning that these unions are \u201csub-branches of\u00a0GEMA populated solely by GEMA members.\u201d We subsequently spoke to Driscoll over email, who explained that although his German is basic, he ran through theTanith\u00a0<\/em>article with\u00a0German industry colleagues, who confirmed that this was the case.\u00a0This article on the DDU website<\/strong>\u00a0also refers to the \u201claptop surcharge\u201d,\u00a0though it also explains that DJs who are members of the DDU \u2013 a minority, if the union is filled with GEMA members \u2013 will be exempt from this charge.German-based musicians have been reacting to the news this morning, though we\u2019re yet to see it confirmed by GEMA or the DDU themselves (Tanith\u00a0<\/em>appear to have a copy of the proposal \u2013 above, right).<\/span><\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
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\n5 Jul 2012 published by www.factmag.com\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GEMA REPORTEDLY CRACK DOWN ON DJS AS WELL AS CLUBS, ADDING NEW \u201cLAPTOP SURCHARGE\u201d TO SETS Earlier this year, GEMA, the body charged with collecting royalties in Germany, announced a\u00a0controversial overhaul of its fee structure.Having historically charged venues a flat rate, GEMA are introducing a system based on the size of the venue and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-confetti-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9311,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/9311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/so-confetti.com\/confettidigital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}