The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is a nonprofit organization established under the

Music Modernization Act The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act or MMA (, ) is United States legislation signed into law on October 11, 2018, aimed to modernize copyright-related issues for music and audio recordings due ...

of 2018. It was created to issue blanket mechanical licences for qualified streaming services in the United States, such as

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

Apple Music Apple Music is an audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users can select music to stream to their device on-demand, or listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the sister internet radio stations Apple Musi ...

Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers. It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights manag ...

, and Tidal.

History

In 2020, The MLC announced that four music data companies had joined its Data Quality Initiative (DQI), including:

Blokur Blokur is a music rights and data platform based in London which provides global music reporting and licensing for digital products and services. The company is an official partner of the MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective). Overview Blokur ...

, Exactuals, Music Data Services, and TuneRegistry. This move was made to ensure the accuracy of their musical works data in its current database. As of January 2021, the MLC began paying

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

to rights owners. In October 2022, it was reported that the MLC had paid almost $700 million in blanket royalties to songwriters and publishers.

Funding

The digital services that use the MLC have a legal obligation to spend $33.5 million on their start-up costs and $28.5 million on their first-year operating costs.

Function

To resolve the issue of music creators not getting paid for their work, the MLC built a publicly accessible musical works database and portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. This is so that when their music is played on streaming services, the generated royalties are collected from digital service providers and distributed to the appropriate songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. On the 6th December 2023, The MLC announced their Supplemental Matching Network, which initially consists of five companies (

Jaxsta Jaxsta is an Australia-based database of official music credits, including performers, artists, engineers, producers and songwriters. Jaxsta's data is content-owner supplied rather than crowd-sourced. History Jaxsta was founded in Sydney in 20 ...

, Pex, Salt and SX Works, a

SoundExchange SoundExchange is an American non-profit collective rights management organization spun off from the RIAA in 2003. It is the sole organization designated by the U.S. Congress to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound r ...

company) that will provide data matching services to complement and enhance The MLC’s existing matching processes and capabilities.

References

External links

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Profile on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
{{Authority control Music licensing organizations Music publishing