The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) reports that it has now distributed over $1.5 billion in royalties to songwriters in the past two and half years since launching full operations.
The MLC was established by the United States Copyright Office (USCO) as an entity tasked with administering a blanket compulsory license for the use of musical works by digital music services following the passage of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) in 2018.
What that means in practice, is that music streaming services in the United States like Spotify and Apple Music have been required to pay large sums of mechanical royalties to the MLC, which serves as an exclusive administrator.
The MLC’s job is to then distribute these royalties to music publishers, administrators, ex-US CMOs, and self-administered songwriters, composers and lyricists whose songs have been streamed.
As of Monday (October 30), the MLC said it has already met every milestone set by Congress in the MMA and distributed over $1.5 billion in royalties.
Click here to view full article.