In the course of the annu­al Gen­er­al Mem­bers Meet­ing of AKM authors, com­posers and music pub­lish­ers the annu­al result 2017 was pre­sent­ed and a new pres­i­dent was elected.

The Col­lect­ing Soci­ety AKM looks back on a very suc­cess­ful finan­cial year 2017 with increas­es in all rel­e­vant busi­ness areas for its 24,000 mem­bers. The high­lights of the annu­al result include:

Total rev­enues increased to 113m Euro and are 4.9% high­er than in the pre­vi­ous year. Domes­tic license rev­enues increased 3.8% and amount­ed to 95.2m Euro, for­eign license rev­enues increased by 13.7% to 13.2m Euro main­ly due to a one-time effect of sub­se­quent claims.

At 9.76% AKM man­aged to keep its admin rate below 10% for the third con­sec­u­tive year and main­tains its best in class posi­tion in terms of efficiency.

Great news for ben­e­fi­cia­ries: their enti­tle­ment amounts to 98.3m Euro in 2017 and is 3.9m Euro (+4.2%) high­er than in the pre­vi­ous year.

aus­tro mechana, the sub­sidiary of AKM, showed a volatile rev­enue devel­op­ment. The strong decline in license rev­enues to 24.1m Euro (-28.1%) can be attrib­uted to high pay­ments in 2016 because of the stor­age media levy. Phys­i­cal sound car­ri­er sales (CDs, DVDs, etc.) have been declin­ing for years and the trend con­tin­ues. Despite a heav­i­ly grow­ing online mar­ket (+18.7%) cre­ators do not get fair pay­ment for their work due to the exist­ing val­ue gap.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Ger­not Graninger expressed sat­is­fac­tion about the busi­ness result, “AKM dis­trib­utes a record amount of 98.3m Euro to its ben­e­fi­cia­ries despite changes in the mar­ket and in user behav­iour and keeps its admin rate at a record low. We main­tain our best in class posi­tion in terms of effi­cien­cy by inter­na­tion­al com­par­i­son with oth­er musi­cal copy­right societies.

The annu­al report 2017 of AKM is avail­able for down­load at www.akm.at/en/service/downloads.

Peter Vieweger is the new pres­i­dent of AKM

The long-term pres­i­dent of AKM, Robert Opratko, had to resign due to health rea­sons, which led to the elec­tion of a new pres­i­dent for the next two years in the course of the Gen­er­al Mem­bers Meet­ing. Peter Vieweger, mem­ber of the board since 2004 and vice pres­i­dent since 2013, was elect­ed pres­i­dent by the Gen­er­al mem­bers Meet­ing and will hold this posi­tion at least until 2020 when reg­u­lar elec­tions take place. “AKM and the gen­er­al idea of Col­lec­tive Man­age­ment Organ­i­sa­tions is dear to my heart. In my role as pres­i­dent I will pro­vide new impe­tus togeth­er with my col­leagues from the board and the man­age­ment to ensure that AKM con­tin­ues its suc­cess­ful path with a suc­cess­ful reper­toire” says Vieweger about his plans as pres­i­dent of AKM.

Peter Vieweger was born in Vien­na in 1954 and is an active musi­cian, com­pos­er and pro­duc­er. In the course of his career he was gui­tar play­er in the band Drahdi­waberl, found­ed the band Spin­ning Wheel, toured as band­leader with Fal­co and rep­re­sent­ed Aus­tria suc­cess­ful­ly at the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test 1983 with the band Wes­t­end. He pro­duced more than 400 songs of numer­ous artists.