Mechanical Licensing Collective at Five Years: What Changed

When the Music Modernization Act passed in 2018, it created what was supposed to be a single, unified clearinghouse for mechanical royalties in the streaming era. The Mechanical Licensing Collective, commonly called the MLC, launched operations in January 2021. By the fall of 2023, the organization had reached a meaningful benchmark that prompted serious industry reflection: five years of active planning and operational run time. The verdict on that half-decade is genuinely mixed, in ways that matter practically for every independent songwriter and publisher using streaming platforms.

Why the MLC Was Created

Before 2021, mechanical royalty collection in the United States was fragmented across thousands of direct licensing agreements, voluntary licenses, and a system of statutory licenses that was visibly failing to reach the songwriters who created the catalog. The U.S. Copyright Office's Music Modernization page describes the core problem: digital music services were legally required to pay mechanical royalties, but the absence of a single database linking sound recordings to their underlying compositions meant that royalties accumulated in unclaimed "black box" pools rather than flowing to writers.

The Music Modernization Act resolved this by creating the MLC as a collective management organization funded by the digital music services themselves. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and others pay a blanket mechanical royalty to the MLC, which then distributes those funds to rights holders based on the match rate between compositions registered in the MLC database and streams reported by the services.

The architectural intent was sound. A centralized database, funded by services that have strong financial incentive to cooperate, administered by an organization accountable to publishers and songwriters. On paper, it is the clearest structural improvement to songwriter payment infrastructure in decades.

What the First Five Years Fixed

The MLC's operational record through 2023 includes several genuine achievements.

The centralization of mechanical licensing for digital streaming eliminated the legal uncertainty that previously surrounded streaming platform liability. Before the MLC, services faced potential copyright infringement claims on every unlicensed composition they streamed. The blanket license structure resolved that uncertainty and gave streaming platforms a legal framework for operating at scale, which in turn made the market more stable.

The MLC's database has grown substantially since launch. Registration is free for publishers and songwriters, and the organization has run outreach campaigns to register catalog from independent writers who were previously entirely outside any collective administration system.

Royalty distributions have occurred quarterly, meaning that registered rights holders receive payments on a predictable schedule. For independent songwriters who previously received mechanical royalties only through manual licensing agreements or not at all, a quarterly direct deposit represents a meaningful improvement in cash flow predictability.

What Five Years Has Not Fixed

The persistent criticism of the MLC centers on two related problems: the size of the unclaimed royalty pool and the registration burden on smaller rights holders.

A detailed analysis from Royalty Exchange notes that the MLC holds unmatched royalties in a pool that must eventually be distributed to all registered rights holders on a market-share basis if the rightful owners cannot be identified. This means that writers with large catalogs of registered works benefit disproportionately from the unmatched pool, because the distribution formula rewards existing registration. A songwriter who registered 100 songs collects a proportionally larger share of the unmatched pool than a songwriter who registered 10 songs, even if neither songwriter wrote any of the unmatched compositions.

The practical implication is that the black box problem the MLC was designed to solve has not been fully eliminated. It has been relocated. Royalties that previously sat unclaimed indefinitely are now distributed on a schedule, but the distribution formula may not accurately reflect the actual authorship of those underlying compositions.

The second problem is registration friction. Despite the MLC's stated commitment to independent writer outreach, a significant portion of independent songwriters had still not registered as of the 2023 operational review period. Suffolk University's Journal of High Technology Law published an analysis examining the gap between the MLC's legal mandate and the practical reality of who actually gets paid, finding that smaller independent rights holders are systematically underrepresented in the distribution database relative to their share of the streaming catalog.

The Registration Gap for Independent Songwriters

For working independent songwriters and small publishers, the MLC registration gap is actionable information. The MLC portal at themlc.com accepts free registrations and allows rights holders to register compositions, link sound recording ISRCs to underlying composition ISWCs, and search for potentially unclaimed royalties.

The registration process requires several pieces of information that not every independent songwriter maintains consistently: composition title, all co-writer names and ownership percentages, publisher information (or a self-publishing declaration), and ideally an ISWC code. For catalog written before ISWC registration became standard practice, this can require reconstructive research.

Mollohan Production Inc. treats MLC registration as a standard operational step for every composition that enters the catalog, ensuring that co-writers and any co-publishing interests are properly reflected before the work begins generating streams. The publishing infrastructure around an independent artist's catalog is often the least visible but most durable revenue source over a multi-decade career, and that infrastructure starts with complete registration.

What the MLC Gets Right That Criticism Overlooks

The MLC's critics are correct about the structural limitations of the unmatched royalty distribution formula. They are less focused on the counterfactual: what did the pre-MLC system produce for independent songwriters?

The pre-2021 system produced close to zero mechanical royalty income for most independent writers streaming on major platforms. The blanket license regime that preceded the MLC covered physical reproduction but did not extend effectively to interactive streaming, leaving a large legal and payment gap that songwriters had no practical ability to close without legal representation.

The MLC is an imperfect solution to a structural problem that the previous system did not attempt to solve at all. Five years in, the appropriate response is not to dismiss it but to engage with it, register completely, check for unmatched royalties in the system, and advocate for improvements to the distribution formula through the songwriter community organizations that have formal representation on the MLC board.

Practical Steps for Songwriters Right Now

1. Register at themlc.com. The process is free and takes an hour or less for a small catalog. 2. Register every composition, not just recent ones. Historical catalog may have accumulated unmatched royalties. 3. Include all co-writers. Missing co-writer registrations create matching gaps that reduce distribution accuracy. 4. Verify ISWCs. For catalog with ISWCs already assigned, link them to the corresponding ISRCs in the MLC database. 5. Monitor quarterly distributions. Log in and confirm that distributions arrive for registered works after each quarter.

For artists working through an organization like Mollohan Production Inc., the label or management structure should own the registration workflow as a standard operating procedure. Joshua Mollohan's consistent position has been that administrative rigor around publishing is not optional for artists who want their catalog to generate income over a career lifespan, and the MLC is now the most important administrative node in the US mechanical royalty system.

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FAQ

Q: Do I need a publisher to register with the MLC, or can I register as a self-published songwriter? You can register directly as a self-published songwriter. The MLC allows self-publishing declarations for writers who own 100% of both the writer's share and publisher's share. You do not need a separate publishing entity to register.

Q: What happens to unclaimed royalties if my composition is never matched to a registered owner? Unmatched royalties are held for a statutory period and then distributed to all registered rights holders on a market-share basis, proportional to each holder's registered catalog. This means registering even small catalogs has value beyond your own songs, because it increases your share of the unmatched pool distribution.

Q: The MLC launched in 2021, but my songs were streamed before that. Can I collect back royalties? The MLC has a statutory obligation to collect and distribute royalties for streams occurring from its launch date forward. Pre-2021 royalties were subject to a different settlement process under the Music Modernization Act's transitional provisions. Consulting a music attorney is advisable for complex pre-launch royalty questions.

Q: How often does the MLC distribute royalties? The MLC distributes quarterly. Distribution timing depends on the payment cycle of the digital music services, and payments may lag behind the streaming period by several months.

Q: Is the MLC only for US-based songwriters? The MLC administers mechanical royalties for compositions streamed in the United States, regardless of where the songwriter is located. International songwriters whose compositions are streamed on US-licensed streaming services can register and collect through the MLC.

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