The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) announced that its total royalties distributed have now exceeded $2 billion. The MLC reached this significant milestone in just over three years since beginning full operations.
The MLC also announced that it filed its initial submission to the United States Copyright Office in connection with the first periodic review of the designation of The MLC and Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC) by the Register of Copyrights.
The Music Modernization Act of 2018 requires the Register to review the designations of The MLC and DLC once every five years. The next step in this process will be a public comment period, during which members of the public can submit their input until May 29, 2024.
As part of its initial submission for the periodic review, The MLC has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to its statutory responsibilities:
-The MLC maintains its status as a nonprofit organization, which is funded entirely by DSPs at no cost to songwriters or music publishers.
-The MLC has received endorsements from owners of musical copyrights representing the overwhelming majority of the market.
-The MLC has demonstrated that it possesses the administrative and technological capabilities necessary to carry out all of its responsibilities under the MMA, including enabling more than 50 DSPs to secure the compulsory blanket license, establishing a public database of musical works ownership data that now contains data for more than 35 million songs, conducting extensive outreach and educational activities that have enabled The MLC to enroll more than 38,000 members based throughout the United States and around the world, and building a royalty distribution process that has enabled The MLC to complete 36 on-time monthly royalty distributions and achieve total royalties distributed of more than $2 billion.
-In addition, The MLC has matched over 90% of the mechanical royalties it has received to musical works in its public database, and effectively illuminated the “black box” for digital audio mechanicals by giving members the ability to search all of its data for the remaining unmatched royalties and propose matches of those unmatched royalties to the works they have registered using The MLC’s Matching Tool.
Despite its focus on U.S.-based services, The MLC has made it a priority to find and compensate rightsholders for their U.S. mechanicals globally, establishing connections with over 100 collective management organizations in nearly 130 countries.
The public can file comments on The MLC’s and DLC’s submissions by May 29, 2024, and can reply to other initial public comments by June 28, 2024. The MLC and DLC will have the ability to file replies to the comments by July 29, 2024. For more information about the periodic review process or to learn how to submit comments, please click here.
