Join as a publisher

AKM and aus­tro mechana ensure that musi­cal authors and com­posers are fair­ly com­pen­sat­ed when their works are used. We act as trustees, man­ag­ing the rights of com­posers and music lyri­cists. We col­lab­o­rate with our inter­na­tion­al sis­ter orga­ni­za­tions to ensure that roy­al­ties are col­lect­ed world­wide. Music users can obtain the nec­es­sary licens­es from us for a fee. We dis­trib­ute the rev­enue to the musi­cal authors and com­posers accord­ing to estab­lished rules.

Copy­right law pro­tects each of your works as your own intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty from the very moment you cre­ate it — no reg­is­tra­tion or appli­ca­tion is required. To pre­vent your author­ship from being stolen, it’s a good idea to gath­er togeth­er the evi­dence that you actu­al­ly cre­at­ed your work at a spe­cif­ic point in time! Tip: send your­self the man­u­script or the record­ing (on a data stick, etc.) of the work by reg­is­tered mail and keep the enve­lope unopened to estab­lish a record of the date, com­plete with the post­mark on it. Keep any doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to the cre­ation his­to­ry of the work. If you are an AKM mem­ber, report each new­ly cre­at­ed work as soon as pos­si­ble and upload an audio file — the work reg­is­tra­tion with AKM serves as proof of your authorship.

Music and lin­guis­tic works are pro­tect­ed until 70 years after the death of the author or the last liv­ing co-author.

Music and lit­er­ary works can be used in dif­fer­ent ways. For exam­ple, through pub­lic per­for­mance, through repro­duc­tion on paper (sheet music) or on a sound or video record­ing (CD, DVD, etc.), through dis­tri­b­u­tion — sale, rental, lend­ing — of sheet music and sound or pic­ture record­ings, through broad­cast or through, that they are made avail­able on net­works (inter­net, mobile phone net­work, etc.). Depend­ing on the respec­tive option, the cor­re­spond­ing exploita­tion rights are referred to as the following:

Right to per­form
Right to broad­cast or right to make avail­able to the pub­lic
Repro­duc­tion right
Right of distribution

The right to per­form, broad­cast and make avail­able to the pub­lic is exer­cised by AKM, and the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion right is exer­cised by aus­tro mechana.
Where we are not respon­si­ble, the rights must be exer­cised by the pub­lish­er or the author him/herself. For exam­ple, when print­ing music (graph­ic repro­duc­tion), when per­form­ing dra­mat­ic music works (so-called grand rights), when com­bin­ing a musi­cal work with a film or audio­vi­su­al pro­duc­tion (“sync right”) or when edit­ing or arrang­ing a work.