This month, we continued to distribute matched Phono 3 historical royalties. We were able to distribute roughly $34 million in matched historical royalties in addition to $71 million in blanket royalties, totaling over $100 million — our second ever distribution over $100 million.
It was great getting to see many of you at the Music Biz conference in Nashville last week. We were pleased to speak at several sessions at the conference and honored to accept the Music Business Association’s Impact Award for Technological Excellence at the third annual Bizzy Awards. We are also proud to share that Dae Bogan, our Head of Third-Party Partnerships, was awarded the Maestro of Metadata Award at the Bizzy Awards.
This month, we continued to distribute matched Phono 3 historical royalties. We were able to distribute roughly $34 millionin matched historical royalties in addition to $71 million in blanket royalties, totaling over $100 million — our second ever distribution over $100 million. In addition, we have now distributed more than $100 million in matched historical royalties. In this newsletter, we provide additional details about this month’s distribution (both blanket and historical) and share information about upcoming industry events.
The MLC completed its fifth royalty distribution of the year on May 14, bringing us to 38 total royalty distributions since we began full operations — all of which were on time or early. May’s distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in February of 2024. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was approximately $88.7 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 more than 83 percent of the total royalty pools reported to us by DSPs to songs registered in our database.
After deducting royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $85.5 million in royalties and distributed approximately $62.4 million to our Members.
To learn more about our May 2024 distribution, click here:
Last week, we distributed the second set of matched Phono 3 historical royalties covering usage from 2018, 2019 and 2020. These royalties pertain to uses during those three years that took place on four digital services: Apple Music, SoundCloud, hoopla and Pacemaker. We distributed roughly $33.5 million in matched Phono 3 historical royalties. These royalties cover usage for which these four DSPs previously paid some royalties directly to some of the rightsholders entitled to receive royalties. (We refer to these types of uses as “previously partially paid uses.”)
We also continued to distribute matched historical royalties for uses that took place between 2007 and 2017 (during the Phono 1 and 2 rate periods). As a result of reprocessing the remaining unmatched historical royalties that we began processing last year, we were able to distribute approximately $591k in historical royalties this month, plus interest, from a number of different digital services.
To read more about the historical unmatched royalties we have distributed so far, click here:
In January, we filed our initial submission to the United States Copyright Office in connection with the first periodic review of the designation of The MLC and Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC) by the Register of Copyrights.
Over the past four years, The MLC has conducted extensive outreach and educational activities to connect with a diverse range of rightsholders. These activities have enabled The MLC to enroll 40,000 Members based throughout the United States and around the world. As a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving its Members, The MLC is committed to active engagement with groups that represent songwriters, publishers and other rightsholders. We have consistently fostered relationships with songwriters or their publishing or administrative partners, earning continued support from numerous songwriter advocacy, publisher and industry groups.
To see the full list of songwriter advocacy organizations, music publisher organizations, and music industry groups, associations and organizations showing their support of The MLC, click here.
.png?upscale=true&width=220&upscale=true&name=MicrosoftTeams-image%20(32).png)
