Tennessean: 'A giant step forward': Nashville picked for national hub dedicated to getting songwriters paid | Mechanical Licensing Collective

A new organization dedicated to ensuring songwriters are paid 100% of the royalties they earn from digital streaming and download services like Spotify will call Nashville home.

The nonprofit Mechanical Licensing Collective is now searching for offices to locate about 100 employees near downtown and Music Row. They will process online licensing and royalty payments for all U.S. songwriters and their publishers.

The collective was born from landmark copyright legislation, the Music Modernization Act, signed into law in 2018 by President Donald Trump. It's the first central organization focused on administering royalties for songwriters whose work is published online.

Its goal is to fix the long-standing problem of widespread unpaid royalties by Spotify and other streaming services.

"This is one of those really significant changes in the music industry that happens once in a generation or two," Mechanical Licensing Collective CEO Kris Ahrend said. "Now Nashville isn't just the hub for the creative part of the music business, we're the hub of administration for licensing and payment of royalties."

Read more via The Tennessean.

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