Answers/Glossary/The MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective)
Glossary · Royalties
The MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective)
The MLC is the non-profit organisation designated under the Music Modernization Act to administer the United States blanket mechanical licence. It collects digital mechanical royalties from streaming services and pays songwriters and publishers. Joining is free.
The MLC began operating the United States blanket mechanical licence in January 2021, after being designated by the US Copyright Office under the Music Modernization Act of 2018. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and every other digital service operating under the blanket licence report their US usage and pay their mechanical royalties to The MLC, which matches the usage to registered compositions and pays the writers and publishers.
The numbers that matter, all from The MLC's own help pages retrieved August 2026:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Cost to join | Free |
| Commission taken | None |
| Payment timing | About 75 days after the end of each monthly usage period |
| US minimum, ACH | $5 |
| US minimum, check | $100 |
| US minimum, wire | $250 |
The $5 ACH minimum is the one worth knowing, because it means a small catalogue does actually get paid rather than sitting below a threshold forever.
Registration has two parts and people routinely do only the first. Creating a member account is not registering your songs. Each composition has to be registered as a work, with writers, shares and — ideally — the ISRCs of the recordings that embody it, so that reported usage can be matched. Unregistered works produce unmatched royalties, and unclaimed accrued royalties are eventually distributed on a market-share basis.
The misunderstanding: The MLC does not replace ASCAP or BMI and does not cover foreign territories. It handles US digital mechanicals. Performance royalties are a separate registration, and mechanicals abroad are collected by foreign societies.
I registered my own catalogue here; check themlc.com for current thresholds and timing.
Related terms
- Mechanical royaltyA mechanical royalty is the money owed for reproducing a musical composition — copying the song itself, not the recording of it.
- Music Modernization ActThe Music Modernization Act is United States legislation signed in October 2018 that created the blanket mechanical licence for…
- Section 115Section 115 of the United States Copyright Act creates the compulsory mechanical licence for musical compositions.
- Unmatched royaltiesUnmatched royalties are royalties a collecting society has received but cannot link to a registered work or recording.
Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.
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