By Indi Chawla

Head Of International Relations, The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC)

In the complex landscape of digital music royalties, navigating royalty collections can be a complicated journey. The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is a key player in the digital music royalties landscape, ensuring that songwriters, music publishers, and global collective management organizations receive the mechanical royalties they are owed from DSPs like Spotify and Apple Music for US streams and downloads. Despite being operational since 2021, the MLC has become a game changer in the music industry, helping rightsholders worldwide receive their owed royalties accurately, on time, and at no cost. If your musical works are being streamed or downloaded by consumers in the U.S., you too can benefit from The MLC’s royalty distributions.

 What is the MLC?

The MLC is a nonprofit organization established under the Music Modernization Act. MLC is transforming the way rightsholders are paid for their music on digital platforms in the U.S. It administers a blanket compulsory mechanical license for digital streaming services (DSPs) and provides a centralized, transparent system for collecting and distributing mechanical royalties in the U.S. digital music marketplace, transforming a historically fragmented process.

 

Every month, the MLC collects streaming data and royalties from DSPs, matches the usage data to the musical works in its database—over 43 million works—and then distributes the money to the rightsholders who have earned them.

With operating costs fully covered by DSPs, The MLC is able to distribute 100% of the royalties it collects to rightsholders.  In just four years, The MLC has distributed over $2.5 billion in royalties.

The MLC is also responsible for distributing historical royalties, which are royalties that DSPs accumulated and held prior to The MLC’s inception. Since 2021, almost 50% of the nearly $400 million in historical royalties transferred by DSPs to The MLC have been distributed to rightsholders. The distribution of historical royalties has continued on a monthly basis.  

Who Needs to Become a Member of The MLC? The MLC’s Global Impact

Anyone who is entitled to receive digital audio mechanical royalties in the U.S., including songwriters, publishers, and international CMOs, needs to become a Member of The MLC to collect their royalties. For rightsholders who have a publisher or CMO managing all their U.S. mechanical royalties, the publisher or CMO will handle the collection of these royalties on their behalf.

Since 2021, The MLC has grown its membership to more than 50,000 Members, including more than 100 CMOs representing rightsholders in nearly 130 countries.  

How To Collect Your Streaming Royalties from The MLC

Joining The MLC is easy and FREE. By becoming a Member of The MLC, you can ensure you’re collecting all the royalties you're entitled to. Here’s a quick list of what you can do to get started and the tools available to help you get paid.

1.      Sign up as a Member: Become a Member of The MLC to start receiving U.S. streaming royalties.

2.     Look for your songs in our database using our Public Work Search: The Public Work Search allows anyone to search The MLC’s song ownership database for FREE so you can search for, review, and share song data. Use our Public Work Search for songs registered in The MLC’s database.

3.      Claim your share of registered songs with our Claiming Tool: The Claiming Tool allows Members to easily search The MLC’s database for partially claimed songs and claim their shares.

4.      Register new songs using our Works Registration Tools:
If you have songs that are not yet in our database, use The MLC’s Works Registration Tools to register them. Once they’re registered, you can begin collecting royalties for those songs.

5.     Match sound recordings to your songs using our Matching Tool: The Matching Tool allows Members to propose matches of sound recordings to their songs. This is for those usages that The MLC has been unable to match. 

6.      Receive your royalties monthly: Once you become a Member and complete all the necessary steps to get paid, you’ll receive your royalties monthly.

Need help? We have a Support Team to help you along the way!

The MLC provides one-on-one support via chat, phone, and email 10 hours daily, 5 days a week. Have questions? Contact our support team here. Or contact our international relations team here.