The MLC for Songwriters: US Streaming Mechanicals

The Mechanical Licensing Collective — the MLC — was created by the 2018 Music Modernization Act and started collecting royalties in January 2021. It's the only US organization that collects digital mechanical royalties from streaming services and pays them directly to songwriters and publishers. (Quick reference card with payout cadence and registration link on our CMO directory.)

If you write songs and they stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, or any other interactive streaming service, the MLC is collecting money owed to you. Whether you actually receive it depends on whether your songs are registered correctly.

Short answer: The MLC collects every US streaming mechanical royalty. Registration is free — register every song with its ISWC and full splits, then search the unmatched pool for money your past streams already earned.

What the MLC collects

The MLC handles digital mechanical royalties for the US. When a stream happens on an interactive service, the service pays a mechanical royalty into a single pool. The MLC matches each stream to the songwriter and publisher who own the composition and writes them a check.

Specifically:

• Every interactive on-demand stream (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc.)
• Every non-interactive subscription stream that hits the threshold of "interactive enough" under the statutory blanket license
• Limited downloads (rare these days but still)

Not collected by the MLC:

• Performance royalties (those go to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC)
• Physical mechanicals — CDs, vinyl, cassette (handled through HFA or direct license)
• Sync income (handled per-deal)
• International streaming mechanicals (foreign CMOs handle their territories)
• Neighboring rights (SoundExchange handles US digital performance for masters)

The MLC is one specific lane of the royalty system. It's the lane indie writers most commonly miss because it didn't exist before 2021.

The unmatched pool

When a stream happens and the MLC has no metadata to match it to a registered work, the royalty sits in an unmatched pool. The MLC publishes that pool on their portal — anyone can look up unclaimed money and file a claim.

As of mid-2024, the unmatched pool was reportedly several hundred million dollars. A lot of indie songwriters have money sitting there from streams of their own songs that never got registered properly.

How to check yours:

1. Create an MLC account at portal.themlc.com.
2. Use the Search function to look up your songs by title, ISWC, or ISRC.
3. If a song is in the unmatched pool, file a claim. The MLC reviews and either pays or asks for more documentation.

This is one-time recovery for past unmatched streams. Going forward, you want every stream matched the moment it happens.

How to register

The MLC requires three layers of identity to match streams correctly:

1. Account

Create an account at portal.themlc.com. Free. They verify your identity within a few business days.

2. Member type

Register as one or more of:

• Songwriter (you're a writer with no publishing entity)
• Self-Administered Songwriter (you're a writer who handles your own publishing)
• Publisher (you administer publishing for one or more writers)

For most indie writers, "Self-Administered Songwriter" is the right choice — you write the songs and you handle your own publisher side.

If you work with Davincii, we register as a Publisher and link your writer side to our publisher entity. Your songs are registered jointly.

3. Works

Every song needs its own registration with full metadata:

• Title (and alternate titles if any)
• ISWC — the global ID for the composition. Your PRO (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) issues this when you register the song with them. Without an ISWC, the MLC can't match.
• Writers, their PROs, IPI numbers, and writer share splits
• Publishers, their PRO/MLC affiliations, IPI numbers, and publisher share splits
• ISRC codes for every recorded version of the song. Your distributor (DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, UnitedMasters) issues these per release.

Splits must total 100% on both writer and publisher sides. Common rejection reasons: missing ISWC, splits don't add up, co-writer not registered.

Payout schedule

The MLC pays quarterly:

• Q1 → distributed in mid-April (about 6 weeks after quarter end)
• Q2 → distributed in mid-July
• Q3 → distributed in mid-October
• Q4 → distributed in mid-January

The lag is shorter than ASCAP/BMI — closer to 6 weeks instead of 6 months. The MLC publishes the exact distribution dates at themlc.org.

Statements show usage by service (so you can see Spotify vs Apple Music vs YouTube Music separately). Audit-friendly.

What goes wrong

Most-common ways indie writers don't see their MLC money:

1. Never registered with the MLC. Streams accumulate in unmatched. The money is there; you just have to claim it.
2. ISWC missing. Without it, the MLC can't link the streaming service's ISRC report to your composition. Your PRO issues the ISWC; double-check yours has it.
3. Splits don't total 100%. Both writer and publisher sides must add up. Partial splits are common when a co-writer hasn't registered their side.
4. Co-writer never set up MLC. If your co-writer hasn't registered, their share sits unmatched indefinitely. You can't fix this for them.
5. Stage name vs legal name mismatch. The MLC matches on the legal name on file with your PRO. If you signed up as "John Smith" with BMI but your distributor reports "Big Smitty" to streaming services, the match can fail. The MLC has fuzzy-match logic, but it's imperfect.
6. Backed-up registrations. The MLC takes weeks to process new registrations. If you register a song the day a major streaming campaign starts, you'll lose income to the unmatched pool until the registration goes through. Register early.

What Davincii does at the MLC

For every artist on our roster:

1. Account setup. Either as our Publisher entity (most common) or with the artist's own self-administered songwriter account if they prefer.
2. Catalog registration. Every song with full metadata — ISWC verified through the artist's PRO, ISRC pulled from the distributor, writer and publisher splits confirmed with all co-writers.
3. Unmatched pool audit. When we onboard a new artist, we check the MLC's unmatched pool for their existing catalog. Recovered money flows back to the artist.
4. Quarterly statement review. We compare MLC payouts to expected revenue based on streaming counts. Flag anything that looks short and file claims when needed.

If you're an indie songwriter with even a moderate streaming catalog, the MLC is the single highest-leverage organization to get registered with. Performance royalties are nice; mechanical royalties from streaming are usually the bigger number — see how much Spotify pays per stream for the per-play math.