For our final Member newsletter of the year, we’d like to wish you a joyful holiday season and a successful year ahead! We are grateful to all of you for continuing to Play Your Part in 2025. This year, we surpassed $3.5 billion in total royalties distributed — an achievement made possible by your continued engagement. Your willingness to use our growing suite of tools to review your song data and address any issues you find helps us ensure you receive all the royalties you earn, accurately and on time.

In this newsletter, we share key metrics from December’s royalty distribution, plus an update regarding DSPs operating under the blanket license we administer. We’re also excited to highlight notable milestones from our fifth year of operations, as well as our latest tech enhancement. Finally, we provide details on the Copyright Royalty Board’s cost-of-living adjustments to the royalty rates for 2026, and close with a reminder to make sure your banking and tax information is up to date.

Please note that our Support Team will have abbreviated hours throughout the holiday season. You’ll find the schedule at the end of this newsletter.

The MLC completed its 12th royalty distribution of the year on December 12. This month’s distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in September 2025. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was approximately $76.5 million.

Every month, our team attempts to match the newly reported sound recording uses we receive to the musical works data in our public database and then distributes the resulting matched royalties to our Members. This month, we were able to match nearly 84 percent of the total royalty pools reported to us by DSPs for their September 2025 usage to songs registered in our database.

After deducting $1.7 million in royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $74.9 million in royalties and distributed approximately $55.8 million to our Members. To learn more about our December 2025 distribution, click here:

We continue to process adjustments to blanket royalties for usage originally reported during the last two years of the Phono 3 rate period (i.e., 2021 and 2022). These adjustments represent the difference between the royalties we initially processed for the usage periods from those two years at the Phono 2 rates and the royalties that are due at the final Phono 3 rates. In the December distribution, we processed blanket royalty adjustments for Spotify (October to December 2021 and all of 2022) totaling $40.4 million.

The December distribution also included reprocessing adjustments for 2021, 2022, and 2023 that reflected a total net overpayment of $43k.

To the extent any of these adjustments pertained to works in your catalog, you will see them identified on your statement by the category type ["Adjustments"], along with the names of the specific DSP for which the adjustment was made.

Here is a tentative schedule showing when we are planning to process the remaining adjustments for 2021, 2022, and 2023.

For a clear, up-to-date view of blanket mechanical royalties reported to us by DSPs that operate under the blanket license we administer — including breakdowns of amounts collected, matched, distributed, and more — check out our Blanket Royalties Dashboard here.

Update on DSPs Operating Under The Blanket License

The blanket license The MLC administers is available to eligible DSPs in the U.S., and today, more than 50 DSPs operate under it. New DSPs may choose to obtain the blanket license, while existing licensees may stop operating under it either through a voluntary withdrawal or through termination if a DSP fails to comply with the terms of the license.

Cantilever Music Limited obtained the blanket license on October 14, 2025 and indicated a launch date of January 2026. A copy of Cantilever’s Notice of License is available in The MLC’s searchable index of DSP Notices, available here.

Since April 2024, we have been distributing matched historical royalties for usage that took place during the Phono 3 rate period in sets. For each set of royalties from a given DSP (or DSPs), we first distribute matched historical royalties for previously unpaid uses reported by the DSP(s) concerned, then we aim to distribute matched historical royalties for previously partially paid uses from the same DSP(s) the following month. This month, we distributed the first set of Phono 3 historical royalties from iHeart in the amount of $423k.

Overall, The MLC has been able to match and distribute nearly $229 million — or nearly 58 percent — of the $397 million in previously unmatched historical royalties that DSPs transferred to us in 2021. To read more about the historical royalties we have distributed so far, click here:

Looking back at our fifth year of operations, there are several highlights we want to share from 2025:

• We’ve added more than 23,000 new Members — our largest ever annual increase — bringing our total enrollment to more than 74,000 Members.
• We’ve added nearly 8 million works to our public database, where anyone can search The MLC’s song ownership database free of charge. Since 2021, we’ve compiled data for more than 52 million works.
• Our current average match rates for 2021 and 2022 range between 93 and 95 percent, and our overall current match rate for all periods is nearly 92 percent.
• Our total royalties distributed has grown to more than $3.5 billion since we launched full operations in January 2021.
• We’ve participated in nearly 270 in-person and virtual events, bringing our total to nearly 1,200 outreach and education events since 2021.
• We’ve added nearly 83,000 new social media followers, growing our online community to nearly 328,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and TikTok.
• We’ve received, reviewed, and approved more than 3 million proposed matches since 2021, enabling us to distribute millions of dollars in additional royalties that were previously being held.

Finding your songs just got simpler! We’ve added an exact match option to the Public Work Search and to the Catalog search in the Member Hub and Songwriter Hub. Now when you search, you can select “exact match” to see only results that perfectly match your search term — while still having the option to view close matches if needed. This new feature makes it easier than ever to locate your registered songs, view your song data, and build your catalog.

Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements coming soon!

Each year, under the Copyright Act (Section 115), the Copyright Royalty Judges publish in the Federal Register notice of a cost-of-living adjustment applicable to the royalty rates for the statutory license. The adjusted rates for 2026 are 13.1 cents for the per-work rate and 2.52 cents for the per-minute rate. These rates are applicable for the period beginning January 1, 2026, and ending December 31, 2026. For more information, click here.

With the new year approaching, now is a great time to log in to The MLC Portal and review your banking information and tax forms to make sure everything is up to date. It’s important to make any needed updates to ensure you receive your tax documents from us in 2026.

If you need a refresher on how to review and update your information in the Member Hub, check out our Help Center article here. You can also watch a short tutorial video with a step-by-step walkthrough here.

Please note that the Banking and Tax tab is unavailable each month from the 3rd – 14th during during distribution processing. It reopens on the 15th of every month.

Please note our Support Team will have abbreviated holiday hours:

December 22: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. CT

December 23: 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. CT

December 24 – January 2: Closed

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