I’m so pleased to share our latest Quarter Note with you, which includes some notable highlights from The MLC's second year of operations. While there is more work to be done, we achieved a number of key milestones this year:
We grew our membership to more than 23,000 Members;
We continued to receive and process millions of works registrations, allowing us to grow our database to include data for more than 29 million musical works;
We successfully completed 21 monthly distributions — all on time or early — and achieved a current match rate of over 89 percent for all distributions through November; and
We have now collected more than $1 billion in mechanical royalties from DSPs operating under the blanket license and distributed or processed more than $970 million in royalties (nearly $840 million in blanket royalties and another $131 million in voluntary royalties).
Notably, we also began distributing matched historical royalties earlier this spring and making the data for any remaining unmatched historical works available for Members to search using our Matching Tool. As of December’s royalty distribution, we had distributed more than 20 percent of the historical royalties we received for uses that took place before 2018 (when the Phono 3 rate period began) after completing our first pass processing these royalties. With at least two more passes still planned for 2023 and initial match rates as high as 80 percent for some DSPs, we are confident that we will be able to distribute significantly more royalties from these historical periods in the coming year while we wait for the CRB to finalize the Phono 3 rates for historical uses that took place between 2018 and 2020.
We are so grateful for the support and partnership we have continued to receive from so many of you, and we are excited to continue working with you in the coming year. On behalf of our entire team at The MLC, I hope you have a happy, healthy and safe holiday season!
This year held many exciting new firsts for The MLC, including:
The MLC launched the new Claiming Tool within the Member Portal — a tool that allows Members to claim their ownership shares of songs and ensure the correct party receives their royalties.
The MLC launched the new Public Search API. Music publishers and administrators, collective management organizations, music technology companies, and others can use the Public Search API to retrieve information about works in the MLC database.
The MLC began uploading historical unmatched royalty usage data to The MLC Portal and started processing and paying out historical unmatched royalties, distributing more than $11 million in historical unmatched royalties to date.
The MLC held its first board election, and at the second annual Membership meeting announced that three current members of The MLC Board of Directors were each selected to serve a second three-year term on the Board.
The MLC launched a new Student Ambassador program to complement its existing Educator Ambassador program. These programs allow qualified participants to earn an official designation, “MLC Ambassador,” by committing to share information about The MLC with their students or peers.
The MLC participated in more than 50 in-person events this year, including attending and presenting at industry events in California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Washington D.C. and in several countries across Europe.
