Answers/Getting started/How to Register With The MLC (Step by Step)

Getting started

How to Register With The MLC (Step by Step)

By Boboy Watson·Last verified August 31, 2026·2,109 words·Getting started

I left my MLC payment method on the default for longer than I want to admit, which meant my balance had to reach $100 before anything moved. Switching it to ACH direct deposit dropped that threshold to $5. That is a two-minute setting, and for a small catalog it is the difference between getting paid and watching a number sit there.

The MLC is free to join, it collects a royalty nobody else collects for you in the United States, and the whole signup is about twenty minutes. Here is the process, in order, with the parts that actually trip people up.

What is The MLC and what does it collect?

The MLC — the Mechanical Licensing Collective — administers the blanket mechanical licence created by the Music Modernization Act. It collects United States mechanical royalties on the composition from interactive streaming and download services including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Tidal, and distributes them to the songwriters and publishers registered as owning those compositions.

That is a different royalty from the one your distributor pays you. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby collect the sound recording royalty on the master. The MLC collects the composition royalty on the same stream. Both exist on every stream of a song you wrote and recorded, and they are paid by different organisations into different accounts.

It is also different from what ASCAP and BMI collect. ASCAP and BMI collect the public performance royalty on the composition; The MLC collects the mechanical royalty on the composition. Same copyright, two different rights, two different collectors. And SoundExchange sits on the recording side collecting digital performance from non-interactive radio. Four organisations, four jobs, no overlap and no fallback.

How do you register with The MLC, step by step?

1. Gather your details before you open the signup page. You need your legal name, address, date of birth, tax identification details, bank account and routing numbers for ACH, your ASCAP or BMI member number and IPI/CAE number if you have one, and a list of your released songs with their ISRCs from DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby.
2. Search The MLC public database for your song titles first. Go to themlc.com, use the public work search, and check whether a distributor, publishing administrator or co-writer has already registered any of your compositions. Registering a work that already has a claimant creates a conflict rather than a payment.
3. Create a member account at themlc.com and verify your email address. The MLC charges nothing to join — there is no signup fee, no annual dues and no commission taken from your distributions.
4. Choose your member type: Self-Administered Songwriter, or Publisher/Administrator. Choose Self-Administered Songwriter if you write your own songs and control your own publishing, because that type lets a single account hold both the writer and the publisher share. Choose Publisher or Administrator only if you administer compositions written by other people.
5. Complete your member profile with your legal name, address and tax information. Use the exact legal name that appears on your identification and on your ASCAP or BMI account, because The MLC matches members across databases on name and IPI number, and a nickname in one system breaks that match.
6. Enter your IPI/CAE number and your PRO affiliation. Your IPI number is on your ASCAP or BMI member dashboard, and adding it here is what links your MLC identity to your performance rights identity across international databases.
7. Register your first work by entering its title, alternate titles, writers and each writer's share. The writer shares must total exactly 100%, and they must match the numbers your co-writers register at their own organisations — this is the field that stalls more payments than any other.
8. Add the publisher for each writer share, including your own publisher entity if you have one. If you are self-administered, list yourself in both roles; if a co-writer is signed to a publisher, that publisher claims their share and you claim only yours.
9. Attach the recordings to the work using their ISRCs, and add the ISWC if one has already been assigned. The ISRC is what connects your registered composition to the specific recordings generating streams, so a work with no ISRCs attached is much harder for The MLC to match to usage data.
10. Repeat the work registration for every song you have released, newest and best-performing first. Back catalog registration is how you reach unmatched royalties already sitting in The MLC's pool, and there is no fee for registering old works.
11. Add a payee and connect your bank account under the payment settings. A payee is the entity that actually receives the money, and no distribution can be made until one exists and is verified.
12. Set your payment method to ACH direct deposit rather than check or wire. This drops your United States payout minimum from $100 by check or $250 by wire to $5 by ACH, and it is the single highest-value two minutes in the entire signup.
13. Save your login details and diarise a check-in for 90 days after your next release. The MLC pays about 75 days after the end of each monthly usage period, so the first statement covering a new release will not appear for roughly three months.

What do the payout minimums actually mean for a small catalog?

The MLC will not send you money until your accrued balance crosses the minimum for your chosen payment method. Those minimums are published by The MLC and they differ sharply.

For an artist with a few thousand monthly streams, the gap between $5 and $100 is the gap between quarterly deposits and a balance that never moves. United States mechanical royalties on the composition are a fraction of a cent per stream, so a catalog that generates a few dollars a month clears the ACH threshold routinely and may take years to clear the check threshold.

This is not a setting The MLC hides, but it is a setting people never open. If you registered years ago and have never seen a payment, log in and check your payment method before you conclude the account is broken.

When does The MLC actually pay you?

The MLC distributes royalties about 75 days after the end of each monthly usage period. Usage in January is paid out in mid-April; usage in February is paid in mid-May. The lag is structural — digital services report usage after the month closes, the data has to be matched against registered works, and then distribution runs.

The practical consequence is that a song released in September generates its first MLC distribution around mid-December at the earliest, and only if it has been registered and matched by then. Registering a work after the usage has already happened does not lose the money — unmatched royalties are held — but it does add another cycle before it reaches you.

Judging a release's mechanical income inside its first three months is judging an empty statement.

Should you register as a writer or a publisher at The MLC?

The MLC asks you to pick a member type at signup, and the distinction confuses people because "publisher" sounds like it means a company.

Self-Administered Songwriter is the right choice for an independent artist who writes their own material and has no publishing deal. It allows one account to claim both the writer share and the publisher share of your compositions, which is exactly the situation you are in when you self-release.

Publisher or Administrator is for entities administering compositions on behalf of other writers — a label with a publishing arm, an administrator like Songtrust, or a producer publishing other people's songs. If your catalog is only your own songs, you do not need this member type, and choosing it makes the account more complicated than your situation requires.

You do not need to form an LLC or register a business to hold the publisher share of your own songs. BMI says plainly that a new songwriter "will not need to set up a publishing company" and that "creating a publishing company will not mean that you receive more royalties" — the same logic applies at The MLC, where a self-administered member holds both shares without incorporating anything.

What information does each work registration need?

Every field on the work registration form exists because something downstream matches on it.

The two fields people leave blank are the IPI number and the ISRCs, and those are precisely the two that make matching work. A registration with a title and a name is a claim; a registration with an IPI and ISRCs is a claim The MLC's systems can actually connect to money.

What if DistroKid Publishing or Songtrust already registers your works?

Check before you register anything, because duplicate claims stall payment for everyone involved.

DistroKid Publishing — the paid add-on, not standard DistroKid distribution — collects global digital mechanicals, United States offline mechanicals, global digital and offline public performance, and worldwide sync. If you bought it, DistroKid is registering compositions on your behalf, and filing the same works yourself at The MLC produces two claimants on one composition.

Songtrust and similar publishing administrators work the same way: you assign administration, they register your works at The MLC and at collection societies worldwide, and they take a commission. Their registrations conflict with yours if you file both.

Standard distribution does not do this. Basic DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby plans collect sound recording royalties and nothing on the composition side. If all you have is standard distribution, nobody is registering your works at The MLC and you need to do it yourself.

Ten minutes reading the help page for the product you already pay for prevents the most annoying category of MLC problem there is.

What commonly goes wrong with an MLC registration?

Four failure modes account for most of it, and all four are avoidable at signup.

• The payment method is left on check. A $100 threshold instead of $5, purely because nobody opened the settings page.
• Splits do not match across systems. If your MLC registration says 50/50 and your co-writer's BMI registration says 60/40, the disputed share is held at both organisations until the parties agree.
• The work is registered twice. Once by you and once by a publishing administrator you forgot you were paying.
• The title does not match the release. The MLC matches usage reports on title and ISRC; a work registered as "Kalapana" against a store listing of "Kalapana (feat. Someone)" is harder to match than it needs to be.

What does The MLC not do for you?

The MLC collects United States mechanical royalties only. It does not collect performance royalties — that is ASCAP or BMI. It does not collect digital performance on your sound recordings — that is SoundExchange. It does not collect your streaming royalties on the master — that is DistroKid, TuneCore or CD Baby. And it does not collect mechanicals from any territory outside the United States, which is the specific hole a publishing administrator fills.

Registering with The MLC closes one of four gaps. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the one people most often assume their distributor already handled.

I am an independent artist who has been through this signup, not a lawyer or an accountant — thresholds and timelines change, so confirm the current numbers on The MLC's own FAQ before you rely on them.