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.