Music Business Worldwide: The MLC has Distributed Over $2BN to Songwriters and Publishers Since 2021

Nashville-headquartered non-profit organization The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) just reached a significant milestone.

The org has confirmed that it has exceeded $2 billion in royalties distributed to publishers and songwriters since launching full operations in 2021.

The MLC has come a long way over the past five years. In 2019 it was designated by the United States Copyright Office (USCO) 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 job of the MLC is then to pay these royalties to music publishers, administrators, CMOs outside of the US, and self-administered songwriters, composers and lyricists whose songs have been streamed.

This month, The MLC completed its 36^th monthly royalty distribution, every one of which, it said, “has been completed on time or early”.

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The CRB published a Final Rule in the U.S. Federal Register setting the blanket license mechanical royalty rates for permanent digital downloads.

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