The MLC collects US digital audio mechanical royalties: the composition-side money your song earns when it is streamed or downloaded on a service operating under the blanket license. Membership is free. It does not collect performance royalties, which come from your PRO, or recording royalties, which come through your distributor.
Most artists meet The MLC the same way. Someone mentions it, they assume their distributor already covers it, and the money keeps sitting where it is. MLC mechanical licensing covers one specific slice of your income, and plenty of artists have nothing covering it at all.
This guide covers what The MLC collects, what it deliberately does not, what registering actually requires, when the money arrives, and what happens to royalties nobody claims. Get the boundary wrong and nothing warns you, because uncollected royalties do not bounce, they just sit. If the two-copyright split underneath all of it is new to you, start with Music Copyright Basics Every Artist Should Know.
The Two Sides of Every Recorded Song
A recorded song can carry two copyrights: the composition (the song as written) and the sound recording (the specific recorded version). They generate separate money, collected by separate organizations. Confusing them is how artists end up registered in one place and unpaid in another.
Mechanical royalties sit on the composition side. They are generated when your composition is reproduced: streamed, downloaded, or pressed to a physical format. The name is a holdover from piano rolls and phonograph records.
For the full map of royalty types, see Music Royalties Explained: The 6 Types You Earn.
What The MLC Collects
The MLC administers the blanket mechanical license created by the Music Modernization Act. The MLC's own description of the job: administering blanket mechanical licenses for eligible streaming and download services in the United States. So: on-demand streams and digital downloads, composition side, US usage.
When someone in the US streams your song on Spotify, that play generates a mechanical royalty on the composition. Spotify reports the usage and pays that royalty to The MLC. The MLC matches it to a registered work and pays the registered writers and publishers.
You do not have to live in the US to join. The MLC's guidance for rightsholders based elsewhere is to become a member directly if no CMO or publishing agent already collects US digital mechanicals for you, and to check your existing agreements first if one might.
What The MLC Does Not Collect
Performance royalties. Your PRO collects those. The MLC is explicit that it does not collect or distribute performance royalties, even though it has to know what a service paid out in performance royalties to work out what it owes on mechanicals.
Sound recording royalties. Your distributor collects the master-side payment from streaming services. This is the payment most artists think of as their streaming income, and it is usually the largest of the three.
Digital performance royalties on recordings. SoundExchange collects those from non-interactive services like SiriusXM and internet radio. See SoundExchange and Digital Performance Royalties.
Physical mechanicals. CDs and vinyl sit outside the blanket license. As of August 2026, the Harry Fox Agency still says it administers mechanical licenses for physical formats, and direct licensing with the publisher is the other route.
Anything outside the US. The blanket license covers US usage. Streams and downloads in other territories are collected by the mechanical society there, or by a publishing administrator working across territories.
Three Payments, One Stream
When one listener in the US streams your song once, three organizations are involved:
Your distributor collects the sound recording royalty and pays you.
The MLC collects the mechanical royalty on the composition.
Your PRO collects the performance royalty on the composition.
The three are not equal thirds. The recording side is normally the largest by a wide margin, and the composition side is then split between its mechanical and performance halves. Registering only with your distributor leaves both composition payments uncollected, which is a real gap. It is not two-thirds of the money, and anyone telling you it is has not looked at the formula.
Why The MLC Exists
Before 2021, digital mechanicals in the US were licensed song by song, and services could not reliably work out who owned what. Royalties went unmatched. Lawsuits followed.
The Music Modernization Act, signed in October 2018, created a blanket license for digital mechanicals and a collective to administer it. The MLC was designated for the job, and the blanket license took effect on January 1, 2021. Services that operate under it report usage and pay mechanicals to The MLC, which matches them to registered works.
How The Payment Is Actually Calculated
The MLC describes the calculation in two steps. First, an "All-In Royalty Pool" is worked out, typically as a percentage of the service's defined revenue or a percentage of what the service expensed for sound recording rights. Second, the total performance royalties the service pays are subtracted from that pool. What remains, sometimes subject to a per-subscriber floor, is the mechanical pool The MLC distributes.
That structure is why the mechanical and performance sides move together. They are two halves of one composition pool, not two independent pots.
The percentage itself is set by the Copyright Royalty Board. Its Phonorecords IV determination, covering January 2023 through December 2027, puts the headline all-in rate for interactive streaming between 15.1% and 15.35% of service revenue, stepping up across the term. What reaches you depends on your ownership share and how much of a service's usage your works represent.
This is why any flat "add X% to your distributor income" figure is a guess. The number moves with the service, the country mix, the subscriber tier, and what that service paid out in performance royalties.
How to Register
Membership is free. The MLC says so plainly on its own membership page, and there is no joining fee for self-administered writers or publishers.
Step 1: Create a member account
Sign up at portal.themlc.com. The MLC's portal terms describe the information it may ask for: contact details, payment and tax information, your US PRO affiliation, and your IPI/CAE number. Members based outside the US are asked for a W-8BEN, which expires after three years and needs refreshing.
Step 2: Register your works
This is the step people skip. Creating an account does not register or claim your catalog. Check each work in The MLC database: register missing works, and claim your share of works that are already registered.
Less is strictly required than most guides suggest. Per The MLC's own registration help, only the work title field is required, with at least one writer in a Composer/Author role on every new registration, and publisher collection shares entered as a percentage between 0.01% and 100%. Alternate titles and recording information are optional.
Identifiers work the same way. The MLC's individual-registration flow does not require an IPI, ISWC or ISRC, although complete identifiers improve matching. An ISRC may be assigned by the recording owner or an authorized ISRC manager, and including it helps The MLC match the recording to the composition.
If you have no publishing deal, you register as both the writer and the publisher of your own share.
When The MLC Pays
Monthly, not quarterly. The MLC issues royalty payments and statements approximately 75 days after the end of each usage month, so January usage is paid around the middle of April.
Payments only go out once your balance clears the minimum for your chosen method. These are the thresholds on The MLC's royalty payments FAQ as of August 2026.
Payment method | Minimum before a payment is issued |
|---|---|
ACH (US direct deposit) | $5 |
Paper check | $100 |
Wire transfer | $250 |
Money that arrived before your works were registered is not lost. It is held as unclaimed accrued royalties and can still reach you once the works are registered and matched.
What Happens To Unclaimed Royalties
This is the part most write-ups get wrong.
When The MLC receives royalties it cannot match to a registered rightsholder, the money is held rather than paid to someone else. For usage from January 1, 2021 onward, the law requires The MLC to hold it for a minimum of three years while it keeps working to find the owner. Interest accrued during that time is passed along to the rightsholder.
Royalties that are still unclaimed after that do eventually get distributed to publishers and self-administered writers on a market share basis. That has not happened yet. As of August 2026, The MLC's market share page states it has made no market share distributions to date and intends to begin in early 2027, starting with royalties still unclaimed from 2021 usage. By then it will have held that money for at least six years, twice the statutory minimum.
The pre-2021 backlog is a separate pile with its own timeline. On the same page, The MLC reports receiving roughly $397 million in historical royalties covering 2007 to 2020, matching over $317 million of it (about 80%), and distributing over $229 million (about 58%). That money went to owners it identified, not to major publishers by default.
The practical takeaway survives, just with less drama attached. Held is not gone. It becomes yours once the works are registered and matched, and for the earliest usage year that window starts closing in 2027.
Registering is a metadata job before it is anything else. Orphiq stores release metadata, including ISRCs and UPCs, against each release, so the identifiers you need are in one place when you sit down to file.
Who Collects What
Organization | Copyright side | What it collects for you |
|---|---|---|
The MLC | Composition | US digital mechanicals from streams and downloads on blanket-licensed services |
Your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR) | Composition | Performance royalties from streaming, radio, TV and live |
Your distributor | Sound recording | Master-side income from streams and downloads |
SoundExchange | Sound recording | Digital performance royalties from non-interactive services like SiriusXM and internet radio |
The composition side needs covering twice: The MLC for mechanicals, a PRO for performance. One does not substitute for the other.
Getting in differs by organization. As of August 2026, ASCAP and BMI both list writer affiliation as free, while SESAC and GMR are invitation-only and do not take unsolicited applications.
The publisher side is where PRO fees show up. ASCAP charges $50 to affiliate as a publisher on its own, and nothing if you join as writer and publisher together. BMI lists a one-time $175 for an individual publisher, $250 for a corporation or LLC, and $500 for a partnership. The MLC charges nothing on either side.
Common Misconceptions
"My distributor handles this." Your distributor collects sound recording royalties. Some distributors also sell a separate publishing administration product that does cover the composition side, so check which one you actually bought.
"My PRO handles this." Your PRO collects performance royalties. Mechanicals are a different royalty type with a different collector, which is the whole reason The MLC exists.
"My publishing admin service covers it." Often true, so confirm rather than assume. As of August 2026, Songtrust says it registers your songs with The MLC on your behalf, for a one-time $100 per songwriter plus an administration fee of 15% on performance royalties and 20% on mechanicals. CD Baby retired Pro Publishing in August 2023 and now covers MLC registration through CDB Boost, a $39.99 per-release add-on.
"The amounts are too small to matter." Per stream, mechanicals are small. Across a catalog, across years, and across every service operating under the blanket license, they are not nothing, and registration is free and one-time per work. Treat it as a secondary income line, not a hidden fortune.
Who Should Register
Register if all three are true:
You wrote or co-wrote a released song.
That song is available on US streaming or download services.
Nobody already registers your works with The MLC on your behalf.
The third point is the one to check rather than assume. If a publisher, administrator or CMO represents you, they generally handle the MLC side already, and registering separately on top of them can create overlapping claims that hold payments up rather than doubling them. Self-administered writers handle it themselves, and that is who this page is for.
Membership costs nothing. The real cost is the time it takes to enter your catalog accurately, and accuracy is what makes the matching work.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does The MLC pay?
Monthly. Payments and statements go out approximately 75 days after the end of each usage month, so January usage lands around mid-April. Minimums apply: $5 for ACH, $100 for a paper check.
Do I have to register each song individually?
No. Each work needs to be registered or claimed, but The MLC supports individual registrations, bulk uploads, and CWR files. In the individual-registration flow, the work title and at least one Composer/Author or Composer writer role are required; recording information is optional.
What if I co-wrote the song?
Register your own share with the correct splits. Each writer, or their publisher, registers their own side. The MLC pays each matched party its share, so conflicting registrations stall the payment.
Does The MLC collect my international royalties?
No. The blanket license covers US usage. You can live outside the US and still be a member, but streams in other territories are collected by that territory's society or by your publishing administrator.
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