GVL
We are one of the biggest collective management organisations for neighbouring rights in Europe. Please read on to find out more about our activity as representatives of our rights holders.
If you wish to operate a non-commercial web radio and play music, you need different licences to do so. The Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten mbH (GVL) issues the respective licence for the exploitation of commercially published sound recordings.
Would you like to register a non-commercial web radio with GVL? In that case, we need some important information from you such as how many hours per day you anticipate your service to broadcast, as this piece of information influences the level of licence fees we charge you.
Please use the following forms if you want to inform us of a registration or notify us of a change: We also provide you with a completion guide for the registration form where we define important terms of the form, for example.
We have compiled the most important and most frequently asked questions surrounding non-commercial web radio for you, please read below:
Artistic performances and contributions by composers and performers, such as musicians or singers, are governed by the Copyright Act. Pursuant to the latter, composers and performers must receive remuneration when their rights are exploited. GEMA and GVL take on this task: GEMA administers the rights of composers and lyricists (authors), GVL represents performers (singers, musicians etc.) and producers of sound recordings. As a consequence, it is necessary to obtain a licence both via GEMA and GVL.
GVL licenses the music recordings used in a web radio service published or released on sound recordings (e.g. CDs) or by on-demand-services (e.g. Musicload or iTunes). GVL's duty to issue a licence applies irrespective of whether the statutory term of protection under copyright for composers and lyricists is still in force or has expired already.
Please note that online streaming service providers only supply the technical framework; they cannot issue licences covering related rights. You as the operator of the web radio are responsible to obtain such a licence.
To sum up: you need to follow these five steps in order to legitimately go "on air":
The licence fees are calculated in accordance with GVL's current tariff for webcasting (available here). A distinction is made between commercial and non-commercial services in the tariff. Determining factors for the calculation of licence fees are, among others, the daily broadcasting duration, the average audience size and the number of the music titles stored for webcasting purposes.
Calculation example
A web radio that
would pay the following:
EUR 250 broadcasting fees per year
+ EUR 62.50 reproduction fees for the musical pieces per year (= EUR 0.125 per title/year)
+ EUR 21.87 equals 7% VAT
= EUR 334.37 TOTAL (gross)
If you divide this by 12 months, you obtain a GVL licence fee of EUR 27.86 per month. GVL issues an invoice every three months amounting to EUR 83.58. (add to this the GEMA licence fees you need to pay separately).