GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller. Photo Credit: GEMA

Germany’s GEMA has posted a small collections increase for 2025, when live performance growth helped offset a broadcast slip en route to delivering nearly €1.15 billion (currently $1.32 billion) in composer, songwriter, and publisher distributions.

Berlin-based GEMA shed light on its full-year financials today, pointing, at the top level, to a 0.4% year-over-year (YoY) income improvement to about $1.54 billion/€1.34 billion. Within that sum, expenses came in at $215.66 million/€188.25 million – down 5.3% YoY for a 14.1% cost ratio and the aforementioned €1.15 billion or so available for distribution to approximately 100,000 members.

(Behind said expenses, personnel costs logged a 0.8% YoY uptick to $88.22 million/€77.01 million, with $127.44 million/€111.24 million, down 9.1% YoY, in operating expenditures. Furthermore, for those seeking extra color, GEMA also released a German-language 2025 Transparency Report featuring additional hard numbers identified by PwC.)

Shifting to GEMA’s 2025 collections by category, live performances kicked in $607.25 million/€530.06 million (up 5.6% YoY).

That’s compared to $375.65 million/€327.90 million (up 5.7% YoY) from online sources – chief among them streaming and its $365.30 million/€318.86 million (up 10.5% YoY) contribution.

Between them, then, live and online made up roughly 64% of GEMA’s 2025 collections, according to the report. Moreover, despite a close to 5% dip for broadcast collections, the category put up $335.78 million/€293.09 million.

Rounding out GEMA’s collections, international approached $103.55 million/€90.38 million (up 2.9% YoY), against $61.29 million/€53.50 million (down 8.7% YoY) in general remuneration claims, $30.12 million/€26.29 million (down 42.4% YoY) in physical mechanicals, and $18.86 million/€16.46 million (down 15.1% YoY) from other sources.

In a statement, GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller, whose organization began 2026 by offloading Zebralution, touched on the music space’s “profound changes” amid AI’s rise.

“The music market is experiencing profound changes,” Holzmüller communicated in part, “and GEMA is actively shaping this transformation. We’re modernising our structures, showing how reliable we are as a partner to our members, and steadily expanding our international network. At the same time, we’re systematically championing our members’ rights — as demonstrated by the court ruling against OpenAI in November 2025, which represented our first success in the AI marketplace.”

And in remarks of his own, CFO Lorenzo Colombini, besides addressing the results in an eight-minute video, emphasized GEMA’s continued global growth.

“While our figures show a decline in sectors such as the advertising market and physical audio recordings,” he said in part, “the positive trends in the live music and online business sectors more than offset this shortfall.

“What’s more, GEMA is steadily growing its international business, representing the rights of numerous creative rights-holders abroad – an area in which we see plenty of future potential for growth,” he continued.

On the recorded side, BVMI earlier in March disclosed modest 2025 financials for the German music market – including but not limited to a 6% physical revenue decrease.