This month’s Member newsletter details our latest royalty distribution, shares an important update regarding our work on historical unmatched royalties, and offers information about new Member benefits and events we have planned for Pride Month.
The MLC completed its fifth royalty distribution of the year on Friday, May 13, bringing us to more than $500 million in total royalties distributed to Members!
This month's distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in February of 2022. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was $57.4 million. We were able to match 85.2 percent of that amount to songs currently registered in our database, setting another record high for initial match rate. After deducting royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $53.1 million in royalties and distributed more than $38.9 million to our Members.
The remaining royalties still pending distribution break down as follows:
$8.5 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
$364k in matched royalties that are on hold.
In addition, The MLC also distributed another $4.1 million in 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.
Last week we shared an exciting update about our progress in processing historical unmatched royalties — Members can now search the first set of historical unmatched royalty data using the Matching Tool in The MLC Portal! This initial set of data consists of all the remaining unmatched data for all historical time periods from the following six DSPs: Deezer, Hoopla, Pandora, SoundCloud, Tidal and iHeart.
We are excited to take the first step toward distributing the historical unmatched royalties transferred to us. We look forward to providing you with additional updates on our progress in the coming months as we make even more data available and distribute more royalties. If you missed our announcement last week or want to learn more about how to Play Your Part™ by registering your musical works, please click below for more information.
The MLC has added two more great deals to our Member Benefits program!
The first is a 20 percent discount on an “Intro to Music Production Package” from Music Production for Women, an online learning platform aimed at empowering women to learn to produce music in a supportive, encouraging and safe environment.
The second is a 15 percent discount on a monthly or annual subscription to Soundfly, which offers a suite of online music courses on songwriting, production, composition, music theory, arranging, mixing and more.
The MLC is celebrating Pride Month this June with a special, in-person event for LGBT creators at our offices in Nashville!
Pride Music: A Music Business Workshop for LGBT Music Creators will be hosted by Dae Bogan, The MLC’s Head of Third-Party Partnerships, on Wednesday, June 22 from 4 – 6 p.m. CT. The workshop will consist of music business insights, education and strategies to empower LGBT songwriters, composers and lyricists with the knowledge and tools to become better self-advocates of their own careers. The event will also act as a structured platform to explore some of the issues that LGBT music creators disproportionately face in establishing a career in the music industry. Click here to reserve your seat for this FREE event with the promo code “MLCpride”.
This week, The MLC will be hosting the second edition of our “Tuning Into Pride” roundtable webinar as part of our Pride Month programming. Join The MLC’s Dae Bogan and several LGBT creators and music industry professionals for a compelling discussion about their careers and an engaging Q&A session that will explore how their identities have impacted their work and personal journeys.
We recently added a new calendar to our website that lists all the upcoming virtual and in-person events The MLC is hosting. Click here to view the calendar, and be sure to check it regularly to see what new events we have planned!
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The Support Team is available Monday - Friday 8 a.m. - 8 p.m. CT.
