The October Member newsletter shares the key metrics from this month’s royalty distribution, a recap of our Annual Membership Meeting and information about upcoming events.
We hope you all are enjoying the fall weather! It was great to be able to share some updates with you all last week during our Annual Membership Meeting. If you weren’t able to join us, you can read a recap below or watch the recording here. In this newsletter, we also share the key metrics from this month’s royalty distribution and details about our upcoming Native American Heritage Month virtual roundtable. Be sure to check out our event listing to see where we’ll be over the next month!
This month’s distribution, our tenth monthly royalty distribution of the year, was completed on October 13 and was our largest distribution to date. This distribution brought us to 31 total royalty distributions since we began full operations — all of which have been on time or early. October’s distribution primarily covered newly reported usage that took place in July of 2023. The total of all royalty pools reported to The MLC for this cycle was approximately $93.1 million.
Every month our team attempts to match sound recording uses 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 85 percent of the total royalty pools we administered to songs currently registered in our database.
After deducting royalties for usage covered by voluntary licenses maintained by DSPs with rightsholders, we collected approximately $88.9 million in royalties and distributed approximately $65.8 million to our Members. To learn more about our October distribution, click here:
On October 24, we held our virtual Annual Membership Meeting, sharing key metrics from the last year and announcing the result of the Board of Directors election. Alisa Coleman was re-elected by The MLC’s Class B Members to serve on the Board of Directors for a second three-year term. Additionally, we announced The MLC’s Class A Members selected Troy Verges to fill the open seat as a Songwriter Director of the Board, which was previously held by Craig Wiseman, whose initial term expired this year. Additionally, the Class A Members selected Kevin Kadish to serve a second three-year term as a Songwriter Director of the Board. A few additional highlights shared during the meeting include:
The MLC has distributed more than $1.5 billion in total royalties to date.
The MLC now has more than 32,000 Members, having added more than 9,000 to date in 2023.
The MLC’s current match rate for all periods through last month’s distribution has now surpassed 90 percent.
You can read a full recap of the meeting here and watch the recording of the meeting here.
The MLC's "The Writer Behind the Song" series shines a spotlight on songwriters through a candid conversation about their music, career and personal journeys. Our Native American Heritage Month edition will be moderated by Paul Steward, who is a songwriter, recording artist, CEO of 2XG Records, Lecturer of Business and Native American Studies (at SSU, SFSU, and SRJC), and a member of the Pomo Native American tribe. Panelists include Cameron Osceola, Delbert Anderson, Cody Blackbird and Ed Koban.
