Guides

CWR for GEMA

GEMA administers performance and mechanical rights in Germany. Germany's society for both right types, one of the world's largest by collections.

History

German collective management traces to 1903, when composers around Richard Strauss organized the first royalty society; today's GEMA carries that lineage through the re-foundations of the postwar era and remains one of the two or three biggest collectors on earth.

CWR at GEMA

GEMA joined the PRS/STIM database venture in 2012, completing ICE; its registration intake is the shared ICE hub, so German-bound CWR answers to ICE's validations.

The works database behind GEMA is operated by ICE Services (owned by PRS, GEMA, and STIM): your CWR lands in the shared ICE database, and ICE's validation rules are the ones that accept or bounce it. Like nearly every CISAC society, GEMA works in the CWR 2.1 / 2.2 era — the versions in production use worldwide since the standard displaced the proprietary registration formats of the 1990s. Per-society delivery profiles do change, so confirm the current version and any local quirks before a first delivery.

Related societies

PRS for Music · STIM · ICE · AKM / austro mechana · SUISA

More: which societies accept CWR · what a CWR file is · files bound for GEMA can be checked free on the validator. GEMA is an independent organization; CWR Check is not affiliated with it.

Two free checks for your CWR file. Is the file correct? Every record, share and control total against the spec, each problem on its exact line. Do its writers match their registrations? Every writer cross-checked against public registration data, including works registered under another spelling or IPI. Nothing stored: check a file at cwrcheck.com.