The MLC Reaches $2 Billion Royalty Distribution Milestone

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) has announced that its total royalty distribution has now exceeded two billion dollars.

The MLC reached the milestone in just over three years since beginning full operations, and has now scompleted 36 monthly royalty distributions to date, evach one of which has been on time or early.

It has 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 (MMA) of 2018 requires the Register to review the designations of The MLC and DLC once every five years.

“We welcome this periodic review of The MLC’s designation as required by the MMA and view this as yet another valuable opportunity to surface feedback from the members we serve,” says Kris Ahrend, The MLC CEO. “We are proud of the many milestones we have achieved since launching The MLC’s full operations, particularly the milestone of exceeding $2 billion in total royalties distributed. Our team has worked incredibly hard to realize the revolutionary vision Congress set out in the Music Modernization Act. We are committed to continuing to improve upon the successes we have achieved to date, in order to serve our members even better over the next five years.”

In addition to the accomplishments highlighted above, The MLC has matched over 90 percent of the mechanical royalties it has received to musical works in its public database, and The MLC has 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. The MLC’s public database search tool allows anyone to search the ownership data The MLC has compiled for the more than 35 million works, completely free of charge.

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Lorie Hollabaugh

Hollabaugh, a staff writer at MusicRow magazine, has over 20 years of music business experience and has written for publications including American Profile, CMA Close Up, Nashville Arts And Entertainment, The Boot and Country Weekly. She has a Broadcast Journalism and Speech Communication degree from Texas Christian University, (go Horned Frogs), and welcomes your feedback or story ideas at lhollabaugh@musicrow.com.

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