MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a series in which we highlight a data point that deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by music data analytics firm Chartmetric.
Nashville-headquartered non-profit organization The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) held its Annual Membership Meeting on Wednesday, October 1, and revealed a number of significant stats about its operations.
The headline stat: The org confirmed that it has exceeded $3 billion in royalties distributed to publishers and songwriters since launching full operations in 2021.
The MLC was designated by the United States Copyright Office (USCO) in 2019 as the entity tasked with licensing and exclusively administering rights after the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was first signed into US law.
It then started to administer blanket mechanical licenses in January 2021 to music streaming services in the United States like Spotify and Apple Music, who have since been required to pay large sums of mechanical royalties to MLC.
The MLC reports to have processed more than $3.9 billion in total royalties to date and directly distributed more than $3.3 billion in blanket royalties to rightsholders.
The MLC also shared several key metrics and milestones during its meeting last week, including that it now has more than 68,000 Members, having added over18,000 to date in 2025.
The MLC’s database now contains data for more than 50 million songs (an increase of more than 6 million new works added in 2025 alone), allowing anyone to search The MLC’s database for free or download a complete copy of The MLC’s public data for “a nominal fee” of $25 per month
The organization noted that it has completed 54 monthly royalty distributions to date, every one of which it said “has been completed on time or early”.
The MLC has also distributed more than $225 million in historical royalties — more than 57% of the total amount of historical unmatched royalties DSPs were unable to match and distribute before transferring them to The MLC.
The org claims that its current match rate for all royalties processed through September’s royalty distribution is nearly 92%.
“Together, we’ve built an organization that is committed to providing world-class service that empowers our Members, enhances transparency, drives innovation, and transforms the way rights and royalties are administered in the music business.”
Kris Ahrend, The MLC
“We’re incredibly grateful for the support of our Members and partners,” said Kris Ahrend, CEO of The MLC.
“Together, we’ve built an organization that is committed to providing world-class service that empowers our Members, enhances transparency, drives innovation, and transforms the way rights and royalties are administered in the music business.
“We look forward to achieving more milestones in the coming year, all while remaining laser-focused on fulfilling our mission to ensure that songwriters, composers, lyricists, and their music publishing and administration partners receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the United States accurately and on time.”
Elsewhere at the MLC’s meeting, the organization’s Class A Members re-selected Kara DioGuardi to serve another three-year term as a Songwriter Director of the Board.
The MLC’s Class B Members re-elected Tim Cohan of peermusic to serve another term as a Publisher Director and elected Lidia Kim of Concord Music Publishing as a new Publisher Director.
The makeup of the Class C Members will remain unchanged in 2026.
“The MLC has become the largest single source of U.S. digital revenue for songwriters and publishers — distributing more than $3 billion in royalties since launching operations, at no cost to our Members.”
Alisa Coleman, The MLC
“The MLC has become the largest single source of U.S. digital revenue for songwriters and publishers — distributing more than $3 billion in royalties since launching operations, at no cost to our Members,” said Alisa Coleman, Board Chair of The MLC, following these announcements.
“With pride comes responsibility. Our job now is to sustain this success, keep improving, and ensure every songwriter and publisher—no matter their size or background—can rely on The MLC as a trusted partner in their creative journey.”
TheMLC also noted that has “successfully developed and continues to enhance its growing suite of tools that enable Members to register works, claim their shares of previously registered works, submit proposed matches of their works to unmatched usage, and more”.
TheMLC also highlighted its ongoing efforts to “conduct outreach and educational activities aimed at reaching the full cross-section of the rightsholder community, with nearly 200 outreach and education events in 2025, contributing to a total of more than 1,000 outreach and education activities to reach and educate rightsholders”.
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