BERLIN: Each parish church paid via its head office an annual, one time, lump sum of €45 to cover all concerts taking place in a church building, liturgy excluded. All each parish church needed to do up to now was submit a “music list” of composer names and works performed, without receiving any additional post-concert bill as music-making was covered by a blanket agreement.
Upon receiving each list, GEMA paid royalties to the composers. Interestingly (as with concerts in regular concert halls), this was done neither on the basis of pre-concert ticket sales and money taken at the box office, nor was it done according to the promoters’ apparent net profit: composer royalties are independently based and calculated according to the length of each work and the performing forces required, regardless of what happened promoter side. This is entirely fair when compared to what happens, or does not happen, in the UK one might note, where promoters of classical music pay a percentage (standard 4.8) of net admission receipts. Hence, GEMA paid out substantially more money to composers than was ever received from the churches.
Some time during 2017 GEMA raised the parish fee from €45 to €75. The Evangelische Kirche quickly settled the issue and signed a new agreement. The Katholische Kirche refused the new tariff point blank. So, as of 1 January 2018, each Catholic parish church in Germany that presents concerts of church music is faced with a GEMA bill for performing music that is not in the public domain.
To understand the enormity of this one needs, as I say, to grasp the way tGEMA system works: a promoter in Germany pays a fee not according to income from the concert, but based on the greatest possible income, or “targeted gross”, if the concert were to be full, regardless of actual takings or profits. The GEMA fee is actually calculated according to the size of a space in square metres (be it a church or a concert hall), the total number of seats, and the price of the tickets. The GEMA fee for a sold out concert would be the same for one with only 10% attendance.
