GEMA-Stiftung — Project Funding for Contemporary Music

The GEMA Foundation pays for concerts and projects that put the music of living German-registered writers in front of an audience. The key condition is plurality: the programme has to feature works by several living composers or lyricists, not one. Projects built around a single person — commissions, portrait concerts, biographical work — are explicitly outside the current focus, because the foundation receives too many of them. The one exception is composers who named the foundation as their heir; their work is deliberately supported.

Both individuals and organisations can apply. In practice the composers, lyricists and publishers involved need to be GEMA members. Genre is not a factor — the statute says support is open regardless of style. The other filter is financial: the foundation aims at projects that could not happen without it, alone or alongside a few other funders, so a well-financed project is a weak fit.

There is no published maximum or fixed sum. Awards are decided case by case by a seven-person advisory board drawn from GEMA's supervisory board — two composers, two lyricists, two publishers, and the supervisory board chair. The foundation gets no money from GEMA's own budget; it lives on investment income, royalties inherited from composers, and donations, so the pot is finite.

You apply in writing with a detailed project description naming every music author in the programme, plus a transparent budget listing any other funders. There are two deadlines a year, and the foundation asks for applications in the year before the project happens — late requests are usually not considered. The process is in German.