Music Streaming Services Pay $424 Million In Licensing Fees, $163 Million Coming From Apple
Image credit: Nadine Shaabana
Streaming services paid out millions in licensing Fees as the MLC gets to work.
The Mechanical Licensing Collective or The MLC announced that it received $424,384,787 in licensing fees from all music streaming services, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music. Apple was responsible for a staggering $163,338,890, the largest amount paid by all companies.
The MLC is a nonprofit organisation designated by the U.S Copyright Office pursuant to the Music Modernization Act of 2018. Their job is essentially to collect royalties from DSPs and then ensure songwriters, composers and other professionals involved in the project are paid. The MLC began work in January 2021. Speaking on the figures the MLC called this “accrued historical unmatched royalties from digital service providers.”
Out all the DSPs Apple paid the most in music licensing fees due to their streaming platform Apple Music. Following was Spotify who paid $152,226,039 and taking third place was Amazon who paid $42,741,507. The list of DSPs also include YouTube, Soundcloud and Pandora.
The full list of DSPs and how much they paid can be found below and you can find out more about the MLC here.
