MLC vs HFA: Which One Does What for Songwriters?

MLC vs HFA becomes a real question once somebody streams a song you wrote on Spotify and you're due a mechanical royalty. Which organization gets that money to an indie songwriter, and should you deal with both?

The quick answer: correct MLC registration gets you paid automatically. HFA generally serves established publishers rather than indie writers directly. You almost certainly need the MLC, while your label arrangement determines whether HFA matters too.

Here's the fuller version.

What the MLC does

Congress created the Mechanical Licensing Collective, or MLC, through the Music Modernization Act in 2018. Collection began in January 2021. It alone gathers US digital mechanical royalties from streaming platforms and pays songwriters and publishers directly, without requiring either one to negotiate its own license beforehand.

Each time an interactive service such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, or YouTube streams your track, a mechanical royalty enters one shared pool. The MLC connects each use with the composition's songwriter and publisher, divides the pool accordingly, then pays out. Streaming services don't need additional paperwork.

Payment runs monthly, not quarterly. The MLC issues payments to members approximately 75 days after the end of each monthly usage period, so a stream in January reaches you in mid-April. That lag is worth planning around: a release lands, and the first real mechanical statement for it is a quarter of a year away.

Keep two details straight:

• Your songs must be registered before the MLC works for you. When the organization lacks metadata for a streamed song, it can't connect the use to you. That royalty stays unmatched until claimed. Review the MLC's published list of unclaimed works for your catalog.
• Only US streaming mechanicals fall under the MLC. Separate organizations cover performance royalties, sync placements, physical mechanicals, and streaming outside the US.

What HFA does now, and what it doesn't

The Harry Fox Agency dates to 1927, decades before the MLC. Traditionally, US publishers used HFA to license music to record labels for digital and physical releases. Its work includes issuing mechanical licenses, auditing, tracking usage, and collecting money.

Then the 2018 Music Modernization Act redrew the roles. Compulsory blanket licenses now let the MLC administer streaming mechanicals. HFA continued operating with a changed job:

• HFA continues granting mechanical licenses for physical products such as vinyl, CDs, and cassette, along with digital downloads.
• HFA is the MLC's royalty-processing and matching vendor, so much of the MLC's administrative machinery uses HFA infrastructure.
• HFA audits and speaks for publishers during statutory rate proceedings.

For an ordinary indie songwriter, HFA does not:

• Offer direct signup. Its main customers are established publishers and those publishers' major-label clients, so most indie songwriters never open an HFA account.
• Provide another route for streaming mechanicals outside the MLC. Those royalties now pass through the MLC.

Which organization fits each situation

Registering with the MLC

Use the MLC's self-service site at portal.themlc.com.

Start by knowing what the form actually demands, because the folklore here is wrong. In the MLC's individual registration tool, only the work title is a required field on the work-details step. Beyond that you need at least one writer in a Composer or Author role, and a publisher carrying a collection share between 0.01% and 100%. That is the whole floor. Writers who believe they cannot register until every identifier is in hand tend to register nothing at all, which is the worse outcome by a distance.

What you should bring anyway, because each one improves the match:

1. A free account. Identity verification usually takes a few business days.
2. The ISWC for each song, meaning its worldwide composition ID. Your PRO, whether ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, supplies one after you register the work there. Optional on the form, valuable in practice.
3. An ISRC code for every recording of the song. Distributors including DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, and UnitedMasters provide these codes. The recording step is optional too, and skipping it costs you the cleanest matching route the MLC has.
4. Writer splits showing the writer-share percentage owned by each songwriter.
5. Publisher splits. Without a signed publisher, use your self-publishing company, or Davincii when you're on our roster.

This is where plenty of indie writers stop because metadata entry is fussy and easy to get wrong. Our walkthrough to the MLC explains each field. We handle the process for our roster, with pricing and the business model listed on our rates page.

Where registrations fail

These common problems leave royalties in the unmatched pool:

• No ISWC. The registration still goes through without one, so this failure is quiet. What you lose is the reliable match: with the field empty, the MLC falls back on title and writer-name comparison, which works until you share a title with somebody else. Ask your PRO to issue the code instead of assuming one already exists.
• Shares nobody claimed. You register your own percentage and your co-writer never registers theirs. Your share pays; the remainder sits in the unmatched pool with your song's name on it. This is the most common leak we see, and it is not one you can close alone: the co-writer has to open their own MLC and PRO accounts and claim their side. Chase them before the release, not a year after it.
• The stage name and legal name differ. Matching relies on your legal name in the PRO file. If your distributor submits a stage name instead, the connection fails.

Which one should you choose?

For an independent songwriter now, a properly registered MLC account is what pays you. You'll seldom work with HFA yourself because it functions mostly as infrastructure within music publishing.

When you start asking if HFA is necessary, ask a better question: does the MLC have every song, all metadata, and the full writer and publisher splits?

That registration is what gets the royalty moving.