Mechanical Licensing Collective Launches Tools For Self-Administered Songwriters, Publishers

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) has announced two initiatives developed to help self-administered songwriters, composers, lyricists, administrators and music publishers organize and prepare their musical works data. By participating in The MLC’s Data Quality Initiative (DQI) or using the Music Data Organization Form, The MLC’s stakeholders can “Play Their Part” in helping The MLC fulfill its important mission of paying royalties accurately and expediently for their benefit.

The MLC created the Data Quality Initiative (DQI) to provide a streamlined way for music publishers, administrators and foreign collective management organizations (CMOs) to compare large schedules of their musical works’ data against The MLC’s data. Through the DQI, The MLC will provide participants with reports that highlight the discrepancies between the two sets of data so that they can more easily address those discrepancies and improve the quality of The MLC’s data.

The MLC has begun working directly with a number of music publishers and administrators to on-board them into the initiative. The MLC is also working with software vendors to help them enhance their platforms to enable users of their systems to participate in the initiative. The MLC looks forward to working with other music publishers, administrators, CMOs and software system vendors interested in participating in The MLC’s Data Quality Initiative.

“One of the biggest and most time-consuming challenges for music publishers, administrators and CMOs is checking the accuracy of their musical works’ data,” said Richard Thompson, CIO of The MLC. “We launched the Data Quality Initiative to help those parties increase the efficiency and effectiveness of this process. Participants in the initiative will be able to see where their musical works data does not match The MLC’s data, so that they can then take the necessary corrective action.”

The MLC created the Music Data Organization Form to help self-administered songwriters, composers and lyricists begin to organize their musical works’ data ahead of The MLC’s roll-out of The MLC Portal.

“The Music Data Organization Form is designed as a worksheet to help guide self-administered writers through the process of collecting the data they’ll need to register with The MLC,” said Kris Ahrend, CEO of The MLC. “The form essentially outlines the information self-administered writers will need to compile in order to register their musical works in The MLC Portal.”

The MLC intends to begin rolling out the first version of its user portal later this quarter. This version will enable users to set-up their accounts and then search, view and edit The MLC’s data for existing musical works and register new musical works.