As we close out our second year of operations, we want to thank you all for playing your part in The MLC process! We are grateful for every one of our Members and the effort you’ve taken to sign up, register your songs and spread the word about The MLC — helping us get more royalties to rightsholders.
This month’s distribution wrapped up our distributions for 2022, bringing us to 21 overall. We have now successfully collected more than $1 billion in total royalties, distributed nearly $840 million in blanket royalties directly to Members, and processed another $131 million in voluntary royalties on behalf of DSPs, bringing the total processed to more than $970 million in royalties. The MLC database now contains more than 29 million works, we have received more than 18 million new works registrations, and we have processed more than 98 percent of those registrations. Thanks to our Members and our team’s reprocessing efforts, we are happy to share that our current match rate for all periods through last month’s distribution has now surpassed 89 percent, and our current average match rate for all of the usage we initially processed in our 2021 distributions (from April to December) is now at or above 90 percent. We could not have accomplished all this without you.
We send you all our best wishes for a happy, healthy and safe holiday season. We look forward to serving you in 2023!
The MLC completed our twelfth distribution of the year on time on Wednesday, December 14, bringing us to 21 consecutive monthly royalty distributions. December’s distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in September of 2022. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was approximately $60.2 million. We were able to match nearly 85 percentof that amount to songs currently registered in our database. After deducting royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $57.5 million in royalties and distributed approximately $42.2 million to our Members.
The remaining royalties still pending distribution break down as follows:
$9.5 million in royalties for uses we have not been able to match to registered works;
$5.3 million in royalties for shares of matched works that have not yet been registered (or claimed) by our Members; and
$452k in matched royalties that are on hold.
In addition, The MLC also distributed another $4.1 million in blanket royalties from previously unmatched or unclaimed uses that we were able to match — through reprocessing — to data submitted to us after we completed the initial distribution cycle for that usage.
Historical Unmatched Royalties
This month, we distributed approximately $2.5 million in newly matched historical royalties from Spotify (now including matched uses from 2016 and 2017) and the other DSPs we have previously begun to distribute. The amount of matched royalties we distributed does not include any amounts that were matched to works owned by rightsholders who were identified as parties to a previous settlements or agreements with Spotify.
These historical royalties are identified separately on the royalty statements we provide to Members, and we specify the usage month for these historical royalties just like we already do for blanket royalties. To catch up on the progress we’ve shared about historical unmatched royalties so far, you can find all the updates here:
Members are now able to search the next set of historical unmatched royalty data — data that remained unmatched after we completed our initial internal matching processes — using the Matching Tool in The MLC Portal. This set of data consists of unmatched data from Spotify for usage that took place between 2016-2017.
Due to the large amount of unmatched data from Spotify, we will be uploading this data to the Portal in phases. So far, we have uploaded the unmatched data from Spotify for usage that took place between 2011-2017 to the Portal. Over the next few months, we will continue to work through the remaining Spotify data and upload the remaining unmatched data from Spotify for uses that took place between 2018-2020.
So, when Members use the Matching Tool to search for unmatched data that corresponds to their musical works, their search results will include this set of historical unmatched data from Spotify, in addition to the remaining historical unmatched data from the 19 DSPs that we added to the Matching Tool since this summer (i.e., Deezer, Hoopla, Pandora, SoundCloud, Tidal, iHeart, Apple Music, Pacemaker, Recisio, Weav, Amazon, Trebel, Audiomack, GTL, Mixcloud, Qobuz,Google Play/YouTube, Wolfgang’s and Slacker).
As we shared before, unmatched usage data is identified in the search results within the Matching Tool as follows:
An “H” icon will indicate historical unmatched usage that took place before January 1, 2021 (the blanket license effective date)
A “B” icon will indicate blanket unmatched usage that took place on or after January 1, 2021
Search results that display both icons will identify unmatched usage that took place both before and after January 1, 2021
To the extent Members propose matches that cover data from any of these 20 DSPs, once accepted, The MLC will reference these matches when we process (or reprocess) blanket royalties and historical royalties in future distributions.
We just launched a new feature in our Public Search that makes it even easier for you to share the data for your songs with your colleagues, co-writers, and others: it’s our new “Copy Work Link” button. Just click the button and then paste in an email or text, and you will be able to send a link to that specific works page to anyone you’d like. It’s as simple as copy and paste! So, the next time you’re looking up one of your songs using our Public Search and you notice your co-writer hasn’t claimed their share of the song, send them the link to that song page, let them know they may be missing out on royalties for that song, and encourage them to claim their share! Click on the link below to go to our Public Search, search for one of your songs, and then give it a try!
