Music Business Worldwide: The Mechanical Licensing Collective has Distributed $3BN+ to Songwriters and Publishers to Date

Nashville-headquartered non-profit organization The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) held its Annual Membership Meeting on Wednesday, October 1, and revealed a number of significant stats about its operations.

The headline stat: The org confirmed that it has exceeded $3 billion in royalties distributed to publishers and songwriters since launching full operations in 2021.

The MLC was designated by the United States Copyright Office (USCO) in 2019 as the entity tasked with licensing and exclusively administering rights after the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was first signed into US law.

It then started to administer blanket mechanical licenses in January 2021 to music streaming services in the United States like Spotify and Apple Music, who have since been required to pay large sums of mechanical royalties to MLC.

The MLC reports to have processed more than $3.9 billion in total royalties to date and directly distributed more than $3.3 billion in blanket royalties to rightsholders.

The MLC also shared several key metrics and milestones during its meeting last week, including that it now has more than 68,000 Members, having added over 18,000 to date in 2025.

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