Greetings from Nashville! I hope you have been able to enjoy the Summer despite the continued challenges we all face as a result of the pandemic. This newsletter contains a number of exciting updates about the work The MLC team has done
since the last time I wrote to you. I’ll start by highlighting two of them.
First, as you may have noticed, we have given this newsletter a name: “The Quarter Note”. With this change, we will now be shifting to a quarterly distribution cadence. We believe this shift will allow us to keep you informed about our progress without flooding your inbox with too many e-mails. If you’re looking for additional updates about The MLC in between issues of this newsletter, I’d encourage you to follow us on social media, where we will continue to post updates more regularly. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can also check out our growing collection of informational videos on our YouTube channel.
July 1 marked six months since The MLC began administering the new blanket mechanical license for digital service providers (DSPs). Here are some of the things we have accomplished over that 6-month period:
We successfully on-boarded 40 DSPs who sent notices of their intent to operate under the new blanket license and we began processing their monthly usage data files and royalty payments;
We received transfers of more than $424 million in accrued historical unmatched royalties (and the corresponding usage data) from 20 DSPs;
We continued to enroll new Members, bringing our total Membership to more than 13,000 Members;
We received and processed more than three million musical works registrations from those Members;
We completed our first four monthly royalty distributions – all on-time – and we distributed more than $100 million in digital audio mechanical royalties to our Members in those four distributions;
We responded to more than 16,000 support inquiries; and
We continued to conduct outreach and educational webinars, bringing our total number of webinars to date to well over 200 and our total number of attendees to more than 21,000 individuals;
The MLC remains committed to reaching and engaging even more prospective Members through new and innovative means and assisting them with joining the organization.
The U.S. Copyright Office released a report on July 8 titled Unclaimed Royalties: Best Practice Recommendations for The Mechanical Licensing Collective, which compiles the Office’s recommendations on how The MLC can reduce the amount of unclaimed royalties that result from its distribution process.
The recommendations in the report were based on public comments submitted by interested parties, as well as input from participants during two days of roundtables sponsored organized by the Office. Individuals from The MLC’s staff, Board and Advisory Committees participated in both days of roundtables, and The MLC has already implemented some changes based on the feedback and suggestions we received during those roundtables.
The report provides The MLC with another resource to use as we continue to build our operations and fulfill our important mission to Members. We recognize the incredible work of the Copyright Office’s staff in compiling it, and we also thank everyone who participated in the roundtable discussions and submitted comments. If you are interested in reading the report, you can access it online here.
The MLC has released the second version of its Educator Toolkit, a free resource we first unveiled in November. It is designed to help college educators teach students studying music and music business about the landscape of digital audio mechanical rights in the U.S. and The MLC’s role in it following passage of the Music Modernization Act of 2018.
Did you know that The MLC also has its own YouTube Channel? Here you can learn the basics about The MLC in our four-part “The MLC Explained” video series, find helpful videos on things
like ISWC and ISRC codes and the Royalty Payment Timeline, and browse through an extensive archive of MLC webinars. We’ll be adding to the YouTube channel regularly, so be sure to subscribe for all of the latest video content from The MLC.
Webinars are one of the best ways to learn about the scope of The MLC’s work and get important questions answered pertaining to MLC Membership, musical works registrations, our royalty distribution process, The MLC Portal and more.
If you work in a legal, financial, management or administrative capacity with a songwriter, composer or lyricist who has yet to join The MLC – or represent a current Member of The MLC who has questions about the organization or their Membership – direct them to our website for a rundown of all of The MLC’s upcoming webinars and encourage those individuals to sign up to participate in one or more. Webinars in the coming weeks include:
The MLC Presents: How Self-Administered Songwriters Can Connect to Collect
