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Information on the current GVL distributions: Payout period postponement

The start of GVL payouts are expected to be made no sooner than at the end of December 2017 and are likely to extend until the second quarter 2018. The artists’ distributions (final distribution for the years 2010-2012, regular distribution for the years 2013-2015 and initial distribution 2016) are likely to extend until the second quarter 2018. Furthermore, the additional payouts for international remuneration we have received from abroad for private copying levies 2008/2009 (ZPÜ monies) are already paid up to an amount of 80% from total.

Due to our IT systems migration, we regret having to inform you that there will be some delays with respect to the payout of your remuneration. 

Overview on upcoming distributions

Supplementary distribution of private copying collections 2008/2009 (ZPÜ)

At the end of October 2017, GVL began with the payout process. From said remuneration, about 77% has been paid out to our members as of 07/12/2017. The recipients of the remaining 23% of the collected monies are still being processed. Unlike in previous supplementary distribu-tions which were paid out via older technological accounting systems, our new accounting system is now being deployed, into which we had to import all right holder data. For quality control reasons, the correctness of the right holder data had to be verified prior to each payout. Unfortunately this led to delays of the payout in combination with the initial operating issues that came with these new systems. We would like to deeply apologise for this. We know that many of you are counting on receiving the payouts from GVL. 

You may already have been paid the ZPÜ remuneration but you might still be waiting for the respective payout information. Due to a system glitch, the dispatch of the payout notifications was unfortunately incomplete. Should you not have received your payout information as of yet, it will reach you in the coming days.

Final distribution 2010-2012, subsequent distributions 2013-2015, Initial distribution 2016

Unfortunately we will not be able to begin with the planned final distributions for 2010-2012 any sooner than towards the end of December. 

The payouts for the regular distributions 2013-2015 will follow these final distributions, just like the initial distribution for usages in 2016. These payouts may, however, extend into the second quarter 2018. 

The reason for this delay are the calculation processes which are running in our new IT systems and currently take significantly more time than anticipated. 

Background

In order to create a sustainable and future-proof GVL, we launched a process to renew all of our IT systems two years ago. Unfortunately there are no off-the-shelf solutions when it comes to the tasks GVL carries out. Instead, we had to completely re-develop completely different systems for recording more than 30 million broadcast minutes, the production database with currently approx. 15.3m products, the process for registering and processing more than 13m contributions, the invoicing and distribution to our right holders, and re-tune these for mutual interoperability. This task has turned out to be much more difficult than originally planned since we developed a systems architecture specially for GVL and therefore is the first of its kind. The consequence is a postponement of our original timeline.

We are working incessantly and under full steam ahead to implement the technical processes and their stability in order to be able to begin with the correct payouts as soon as possible. 

We can assure you that all entitled contribution registrations will be taken into account for the final distribution and that we will create the necessary reserves for yet open and unresolved cases in order to be able to clarify these cases without any additional time pressure.

The Associates’ and Delegates’ Assembly of GVL as well as our supervisory authority, the German Patent and Trademark Office have been informed of this delay.

If you have any questions concerning your contributions, and of course the distribution, GVL’s support team is happy to help. Please contact them on +49 30 48483-677 or by e-mail at artsys.gvl.de.

Your GVL-Team