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Banner - November Royalty Distribution Recap

The MLC completed our eleventh distribution of the year, and 20th overall, on time on Monday, November 14. This month's distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in August of 2022. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was approximately $59.6 million.

We were able to match nearly 85 percent of that amount to songs currently registered in our database. 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 above 90 percent. After deducting royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $56.9 million in royalties and distributed over $41.9 million to our Members.

The remaining royalties still pending distribution break down as follows:

$9.2 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 
$466k in matched royalties that are on hold.

In addition, The MLC also distributed another $6.3 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.

This month, we distributed approximately $762k in newly matched historical royalties from Spotify, Slacker (a subsidiary of LiveOne, Inc. (formerly LivexLive)), 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 previous settlements or agreements with Spotify. Additionally, Slacker transferred less than the amount of unmatched royalties it reported, so we have prorated the payments Slacker made among all of the activity reported and are paying our matched royalties at that pro rata amount.

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.

Header - The Next Set of Unmatched Data is Now Available in The MLC Portal

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 2014-2015 and the remaining unmatched data for all rate periods from Slacker.

Due to the large amount of unmatched data from Spotify, we will be uploading this data to the Portal in phases. Last month we uploaded the unmatched data from Spotify for usage that took place between 2011-2013 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 2016-2020.

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 and Slacker, in addition to the remaining historical unmatched data from the 18 DSPs that we added to the Matching Tool over the last five months (i.e., Deezer, Hoopla, Pandora, SoundCloud, Tidal, iHeart, Apple Music, Pacemaker, Recisio, Weav, Amazon, Trebel, Audiomack, GTL, Mixcloud, Qobuz, GooglePlay/YouTube and Wolfgang’s).

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.

Members, are you getting paid all your streaming royalties? As a Member, there are several MLC tools you can use to help you make the most of your MLC membership. Check out our MLC tools checklist to make sure you’re getting paid the royalties you have earned: