GEMA-Free Music: What It Means and When It Matters

Composers, lyricists, and music publishers cannot track every place their work is played. That is what collecting societies, also called performing rights organizations, are for. In Germany, the society for musical works is GEMA.

Most countries have their own equivalents: PRS for Music in the UK, ASCAP and BMI in the US, SACEM in France, SOCAN in Canada, and many more. They work in a similar way. They license music to users such as venues, broadcasters, restaurants, and retailers, collect fees, and pay the money out to their members.

Through agreements between societies, many of them also represent each other's repertoire. That is why a song by an American songwriter can still be licensed through GEMA when it is played in a German store.

"GEMA-free" means the creators of a work are not GEMA members, and the work is not represented by GEMA through a partner society abroad either. As a result, no GEMA fees apply to that work.

That is all the term says. The music is still protected by copyright, and the rights still belong to the creator or the company distributing it. The article Royalty-free vs. copyright-free vs. Creative Commons explains how these terms differ.

Common misunderstandings:

Because GEMA works with collecting societies in many other countries, it represents a very large share of the music played worldwide. German courts have derived a principle from this, known as the GEMA presumption.

Put simply: when music is used publicly in Germany, it is presumed that GEMA manages the rights. Anyone who disputes this generally has to prove it. With GEMA-free music, the burden of proof is on you as the user, not on GEMA.

A general statement such as "we only play GEMA-free music" is often not enough. What helps is specific information for each track: the title, the creator, where you got it, and the license you use it under.

The GEMA presumption is mainly relevant for public performance, meaning music played to an audience outside a private circle. Typical cases include:

For videos on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, the question is usually a different one. What matters is whether your license covers use in the video and whether a platform's detection system flags a track. That has little to do with the GEMA presumption in a store.

For your video, the license agreement with the provider is what counts. To learn what royalty-free music actually means, read What is royalty-free music?

Keep in mind: a license for online video does not automatically cover playing music in a physical space. If you want to use the same music in a video and in your store, check both uses separately.

Whether a platform or a collecting society comes asking, good records let you respond quickly. For every track you use, keep the key documents. The article How to prove your music license shows what that looks like in practice.

Tontable offers nearly 900 instrumental tracks under a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license, covering uses such as videos, commercials, social media, podcasts, and client projects. If you buy Tontable music, you may not register it with a collecting society or with a detection system such as YouTube Content ID.

If you want to play music publicly in a physical space, such as a store or at an event, find out beforehand which rights you need. Read the license terms and ask if anything is unclear before you use the music. Every license has a license ID in the format LIC-YY-XXXXXX that you can find in your account. You can listen to the catalog in the music library.

This article is a general overview and not legal advice. For specific questions about public performance, talk to a lawyer or contact the relevant collecting society directly.