The MLC Explained: How It Works and How to Register

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) collects streaming and download mechanical royalties in the United States and pays them to registered songwriters and publishers. 

Every on-demand stream of your song generates a mechanical royalty on the composition side, but the MLC only pays people who have registered their works. If you haven't registered, those royalties accumulate as unmatched funds, and the MLC can eventually distribute them to other rightsholders. 

The MLC doesn't notify you when royalties go unclaimed, and no one else collects them for you. Your PRO doesn't handle mechanicals, and neither does your distributor, so registration is the only way to receive this income.

This guide explains what the MLC is, why Congress created it, how it works, and how to register for free.

Key Takeaways

• The MLC collects U.S. streaming and download mechanical royalties and pays registered members monthly.
• Congress created it under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, and it has distributed nearly $4 billion since 2021.
• Registration is free, and the MLC never takes a commission on your royalties.
• Your PRO and your distributor don't collect mechanicals, so MLC registration is the only way to receive them.
• Unregistered royalties go unmatched, and the MLC plans to start distributing unclaimed funds to publishers by market share in early 2027.

What Is the MLC?

If you’re wondering what the MLC is and why it keeps coming up in conversations about streaming pay, here's the simple version. 

The MLC is the single organization responsible for collecting and distributing U.S. digital audio mechanical royalties. Congress created it under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, and it launched full operations in 2021, sending its first distribution that April. It exists to do one job at scale, which is matching streams to songs and songs to the people who own them.

The MLC has distributed more than $4 billion in royalties since launching, making it the largest single source of U.S. digital revenue for songwriters. It has more than 90,000 members worldwide, and its free public database holds data for more than 54 million songs. 

Its match rate for recent distributions runs near 92 percent, and it has completed every monthly distribution on time or early. You can see the live figures and search the database at themlc.com.

Why the MLC Was Created

Before the MLC, streaming platforms had no reliable way to figure out which songwriters they owed. Every stream plays a recording, but the mechanical royalty belongs to the composition behind it, and platforms often couldn't see who owned that composition. 

Multiply that problem across tens of millions of tracks, and the result was predictable. Unclaimed royalties piled up, and lawsuits followed.

The Music Modernization Act of 2018 fixed this by mandating a single collective to handle the blanket mechanical license for digital services. The Register of Copyrights designated the MLC to fill that role, a designation renewed in June 2026 after the first periodic review. Now one organization licenses the platforms, holds the ownership data, and pays out the money.

How the MLC Works

The MLC operates through a blanket license, which is a single license that covers musical works streamed and downloaded in the United States. 

Any eligible streaming or download service can operate under it instead of negotiating separate mechanical licenses with every songwriter and publisher. The services pay into the system, and the MLC sorts out who gets what.

The process includes five steps, which the MLC outlines on its site:

1. Rightsholders sign up to become members.
2. Members register their songs in the MLC Portal.
3. Each month, digital service providers send usage data and royalties to the MLC for everything streamed and downloaded on their services.
4. The MLC matches the reported streams and downloads to registered songs and calculates what is owed.
5. The MLC pays its members.

The MLC pays members monthly rather than quarterly or annually. A catalog that earns through the MLC earns on a predictable schedule.

What the MLC Collects (and What It Doesn't)

A single stream generates several royalties, not one, and different organizations collect each of them. When someone plays your song on Spotify, three separate payments fire at once:

• The sound recording royalty goes to your label or distributor, and it's the payment most artists think of as streaming income.
• The performance royalty on the composition goes to your PRO, such as ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC.
• The mechanical royalty on that same composition goes to the MLC.

The MLC handles the U.S. digital audio mechanical and nothing else. It doesn't collect performance royalties, sound recording royalties, physical mechanicals from CDs and vinyl, or international mechanicals, so each of those requires its own registration.

This is where songwriters lose money. Registering with your distributor captures the sound recording side only, so if that's your entire setup, you're collecting just one of the three royalty streams your music generates. The mechanical and performance shares sit unclaimed until you register with the MLC and a PRO.

Who Needs to Register with the MLC?

Anyone entitled to collect U.S. digital audio mechanical royalties needs to register. In practice, that covers three groups:

• Self-administered songwriters, composers, and lyricists who manage their own songs and collect their own royalties.
• Music publishers and publishing administrators who manage catalogs on behalf of creators.
• International collective management organizations that control mechanical rights and need to register the works they administer in the United States.

If you've released music on any on-demand streaming service in the U.S. and you handle your own publishing, you need to register. 

However, there's one exception worth checking first. If you already work with a publisher or publishing administrator, they may handle your MLC registration for you, and they often do. Ask them before you register yourself, because if you both register the same song, you won't get paid until the MLC sorts it out.

You can review the full membership categories at themlc.com/membership.

How to Register with the MLC

Registering with the MLC is free, and it never takes a commission on your royalties. All you need to do is follow two simple steps.

First, become a member. Create your account, then provide your legal name, contact details, tax information, and the banking details where you want royalties sent. This step makes you eligible to collect.

Second, register your works. Inside the Member Hub, add each song as a "work" in the MLC's database. For each work, you’ll need to provide:

• The song title
• All writers and their ownership splits
• Publisher information
• Identifying codes, such as the ISWC for the composition and the ISRC from your distributor for the recording

If you're your own publisher, as most independent songwriters are, you register as both songwriter and publisher. Before you register a song from scratch, check whether it's already in the database, because someone may have registered it and left your share unclaimed. You can find your partial works and claim your portion using The MLC's Claiming Tool, instead of creating a duplicate.

Streaming services also transferred their historical unmatched royalties to the MLC when the blanket license took effect, covering streaming activity from 2007 to 2020. The MLC has distributed more than $225 million of that money so far. If your older works went unmatched, registering is the only way to find out whether a share is yours.

Do You Still Need a Publishing Administrator?

Yes, in most cases. The MLC collects U.S. streaming mechanicals only, and a publishing administrator collects everything else on the composition side, including:

• International mechanicals from foreign collection societies
• Royalties from platforms and territories outside the blanket license
• Registrations with societies you can't join directly

Services like Songtrust, CD Baby Pro, and TuneCore Publishing do this work for a commission.

If you sign with a publishing administrator, they usually register you with the MLC as part of their service. In that case, don't also register yourself. Two registrations on the same work will create an overclaim. This means the submitted ownership shares add up to more than 100 percent, and your payments will be frozen until the MLC resolves the conflict.

What Happens to Unclaimed Royalties?

When the MLC can't match money to a registered owner, that money goes into a pool of unmatched royalties. The MLC publishes the usage data and gives members tools to search the pool and claim their works.

The pool doesn't hold your money forever. The MLC has announced plans to begin distributing long-unclaimed royalties to registered publishers by market share starting in early 2027. The largest publishers hold the largest market share, so they would collect most of it.

The MLC's match rate is now about 92 percent, so roughly 8 percent of royalties still go unmatched. Registering is the only way to keep your share out of that distribution.

What to Do Once You're Registered

Once your songs are registered and earning, your catalog has a track record. You can see exactly what your songs earn each month, and that history is what makes your catalog worth something to a buyer.

That's where Royalty Exchange comes in. You can sell a portion of your future royalty income on your own terms, and you keep:

• Your copyright
• Your songwriter credit
• Control of how your music gets used

You choose how much income to sell and for how long, and you get paid upfront. The cleaner your registration and the stronger your earning history, the stronger your position. Our guide to what a music catalog is and what selling really means explains how it works.

Want to know what your catalog is worth today? Get an offer.