GVL's ordinary Board meeting took place on 19 March 2013 in Berlin. The 24-member GVL Board represents all artists, producers of sound recordings and event organisers who had assigned their neighbouring rights to GVL. Under the chairmanship of Hartmut Karmeier, and joined by the GVL Managing Directors Dr. Tilo Gerlach and Guido Evers as well as the two Associates' representatives Gerald Mertens (German Orchestra Association (registered association)) and Prof.

GVL announced that it succeeded in increasing its total income during financial year 2012 by EUR 18.6m to EUR 146.9m. The increase is nearly entirely due to income from the copying sector and results from a partial specification of receivables by the ZPÜ (central collection and distribution organisation for private copying levies in Germany) vis-a-vis manufacturers and importers of devices and storage media for private copies.

On 14 February 2014, GVL held rights holders' assembly at the Intercontinental Hotel Berlin that it had brought forward in time. The election of Board members by the rights holders which usually takes place every three years was brought forward due to the fact that the validity of the past Board elections in 2012 was challenged by a rights holder by lodging an appeal.

"We have re-evaluated and re-aligned many processes and structures in the past few years in order to be able to offer both our members and rights users solutions that are ready for the future. The migration of our distribution systems to a usage-based distribution for artists and the intensified cooperation with foreign sister societies are only two examples for the change that our collective management organisation is undergoing", explain the two Managing Directors, Guido Evers and Dr. Tilo Gerlach.

The Federal Court of Justice referred the decision relating to an increase of the GVL share in the GEMA tariff for public performance back to the Higher Regional Court in Munich.

After several years of negotiation, new general agreements were signed with the associations BCH and BITKOM in January 2014. Based on this event, the central collection and distribution organisation for private copying levies in Germany (ZPÜ), as a form of a collection one-stop-shop for nine German collective management organisations was now in a position to pass the belated remuneration on to the affiliated collective management organisations.

"We look back on a successful financial year 2013 where we were able to increase our total returns again. The positive news is emphasised by the recently received private copying remuneration for PCs that we had to declare as blocked funds in our annual accounts", report Guido Evers and Dr. Tilo Gerlach, GVL's Managing Directors.

GVL can look back on a successful financial year 2014: Total returns for 2014 amount to EUR 163.4m and are thus EUR 12.9m higher than in the previous year (+ 8.5%). This noticeable gain of returns is mainly due to increased claims for copying remuneration (EUR 35.1m compared to EUR 22.9m in the previous year), as well as back payments for private copies made on personal computers for the period 2011-2013.

In August 2010, the Arbitration Board of the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) had deemed it adequate to increase the tariff to 30% of the GEMA tariff - this had been confirmed by the Higher Regional Court Munich in September 2012. Both sides had, however, appealed this decision; GVL appealed because it was not understandable why the tariff for performing artists and producers of sound recordings should amount to less than a third of that paid to authors; The dance school associations appealed because they rejected any increase whatsoever.

"Concluding these general agreements is a major breakthrough for us, as we finally managed to push through remuneration payments for our members - currently counting more than 145,000 - and the usage of their works on mobiles and tablets after many years", the two Managing Directors of GVL, Guido Evers and Dr. Tilo Gerlach rejoice. "For quite a few years now, many people use mobiles and tablets for making private copies.