Dr. Nils Bortloff, Vice President Legal & Business Affairs at Universal Music, has been an active Board member since 2004; Jörg Glauner, General Counsel Warner Music Central Europe, joined one year after that. The COO & CFO at Warner Music Central Europe, Andreas Klöpfel, has been involved since 2013, while lawyer Ekkehard Kuhn can look back on a Board membership counting nearly nine years.

The total amount of EUR 60.9m arising from financial year 2014 is available to artists; Starting in December 2015, a part of that amount is being paid out to our members. Other payments include the subsequent distributions for distribution years 2010-2013 (distribution 2010-2013). These equal a total amount of EUR 27.6m. This has led to increases in remuneration amounts for the years 2010-2012 as well as a slight reduction of the remuneration amount for 2013, when compared to the distribution in December 2014.

In line with this motto, it is GVL's members that are the focal point of this new 16-page publication: "We specifically renounced on depicting artists and producers' representatives by replacing them with models.

Biere has been a member of the Board since January 2013 and had been appointed by the German Orchestra Association (DOV) as a representative for the orchestra participants' group. Biere is also a member of the GVL Board's tariff and distribution committee. In May 2015, he had been elected to be first chairman of the entire DOV Board. Born in Eastern Westfalia, he plays the violin in the WDR Symphony Orchestra and in the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.

'Our duty as collective management organisation also entails to protect cultural diversity. As a consequence, we are even more shocked by the fact that this precious cultural asset is attacked in such an unacceptable manner", emphasise GVL Managing Directors Dr. Tilo Gerlach and Guido Evers. "In the name of more than 140,000 members, who have their roots in many countries around the world, we speak out against intolerance and violence against refugees."