The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is an organization created as part of the Music Modernization Act (signed into law on October 11, 2018) to help songwriters and music publishers get paid when their music is streamed or downloaded digitally.
What Does the MLC Do?
- Maintain a public database of music compositions and their copyright owners.
- Collect mechanical royalties from digital streaming and download services.
- Pay those royalties to the rightful copyright owners.
Here’s how it works:
- Digital services like Spotify or Apple Music pay royalties to the MLC based on how many times a song is streamed or downloaded.
- Songwriters and publishers register their songs and ownership details with the MLC to ensure they get paid.
Before the MLC, streaming services submitted Notices of Intent to the U.S. Copyright Office when they couldn’t find a song’s copyright owner. This process was slow and often meant songwriters didn’t get paid.
The MLC simplifies this by issuing a blanket mechanical license for digital streaming and downloads. This license allows services to legally play millions of songs while ensuring that royalties are more efficiently collected and delivered to the correct copyright holders.