Image Credit: The MLC

The Mechanical Licensing Collective launches next month and will be working with artists and their tracks to ensure everyone gets fairly paid on music streaming services.

The MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) are a new royalty collection agency launching at the start of 2021, administered by the U.S. Copyright Office. As their name suggests, they will be ensuring the collection of royalties for mechanical licenses on digital streams.

Mechanical Licenses

Streaming services pay out for the sound recording licensing of a song which goes to the artist – or their representatives – who has recorded the music that is earning through streams or digital purchases.

What the MLC will do is cover the mechanical licenses. This applies to the songwriter of the music. In the case of covers, this will ensure that the original songwriter gets their entitled earnings from every stream. In the case of original music, this may provide an extra revenue stream for artists who are the official songwriter for their music that may not have been receiving the mechanical royalties and instead only received earnings from their recording of the song.

What the MLC will do

The MLC will collect royalties from digital music services when they are played in the United States. Using a catalogue of artists and artist representatives who can sign up to their services from their website, the MLC will then correctly pay out to songwriters for their copyrighted works being played.

In general, composition copyrights apply as soon as you have written a piece of music. You can find out more about the copyrights of music here.

Will I still get royalties from RouteNote?

Absolutely! We cover the sound recording of your music, so the earnings for that will still come through your distributor – if you’re a RouteNote, that means us.

The MLC are just increasing the protections and revenue options for artists who have their music online.

You can sign up as a member of the MLC now to ensure your songwriting composition is protected and you receive your rightful earnings.