Mechanical Licensing & The MLC

The Gist 

WHERE:  TheMLC.com/connect-collect

WHAT DO THEY PAY:  Royalties from streaming and downloads 

WHO DO THEY PAY:  “Publishers” & "Songwriters"

WHEN DO THEY PAY: The MLC pays out royalties monthly, but you won't receive each month's payment until approximately 75 days after the end of each calendar month. So there will be a bit of a delay at first. 
Payments are available via direct deposit ($5 minimum), wire ($250 minimum), or paper check ($100 minimum).  

HOW MUCH?:  Free to join & you receive 100% of your royalties.

What is the MLC? 

The Mechanical Licensing Collective, MLC, does exactly what it says.
It collects royalties owed on the mechanical licenses used when your music is distributed & reproduced on digital platforms such as streaming services & when other artists release covers of your original compositions digitally. 

These royalties are for “Songwriters” & “Publishers”, however the MLC specifically sends these funds to “Publishers”.*

To clarify, if an independent songwriter acts as their own publisher, the MLC would pay them directly.
And, if a songwriter works with a publisher agency or service, the MLC would pay the publisher directly instead of the artist. The Publisher would then be responsible for allotting the “songwriter” portion of those royalties to the artist. 

What is a Mechanical License? 

To understand the MLC properly, we do need to detour slightly to discuss Mechanical Licenses as a whole. 

A “Mechanical License” is a type of music license which gives someone (like a label or streaming service) permission to reproduce and distribute a song.

So simply put, paying for a mechanical license is required anytime a label makes a physical reproduction of music on CD or Vinyl (for any composition they do not own themselves) or when an interactive streaming service allows someone's music to be played on their platform.

Where this can be a bit confusing is the MLC specifically only collects & pays royalties owed on mechanical licenses from interactive digital reproductions of your compositions on interactive streaming services (Like Spotify & Apple Music).
However "Mechanical Licenses" in a broader sense also apply to physical reproductions (CD, Vinyl) & cover songs; but royalties on those mechanical licenses are not collected by the MLC.
Mechanical Licenses outside the US are also handled by MROs (Mechanical Rights Organizations) and/or CMOs (Collective Management Organizations) in other countries. 

Mechanical Licenses the MLC Handles  

In the case of interactive streaming services; the MLC issues a blanket mechanical license to these services in order for them to ‘reproduce’ (aka, let you stream) music legally under US copyright law. These services then report their streaming numbers & any funds owed per stream under that blanket license back to the MLC whom is then responsible for paying those royalties to the actual songwriters & publishers. 

Mechanical Licenses the MLC does not handle 

In the case of labels releasing music on physical formats such as CD & Vinyl; A label *should* be paying the composition publisher (or self-administered song writer) a mechanical license fee for each physical reproduction of a song they create. This rate is generally based on the current statutory rate under US copyright law of 9.1¢ each (for songs under 5 minutes), however a label or publisher can negotiate a different rate.
*I say should, as I have also seen this just “left out” of many licensing agreements.

As an easy example: if a label wants to produce 1,000 CDs of a 10 song album at the statutory rate 12.7¢ per song as of 2025; that means the label should be paying the songwriter/publisher $1,270 in mechanical royalties (10 x 1,000 x $0.127 = $1,270). 
However, if the artist was paid a recoupable advance, these mechanical royalties would likely be applied to that recoupment rather than being paid to the artist directly. 

What About Covers of Songs by other Artists? 

And lastly, Mechanical Licenses also apply to cover songs. Which is precisely how songwriters/publishers still earn royalties when a different artist records a cover of their original work.

If you release a cover song on streaming services only; all you need to do is properly mark your song as a cover within your digital distributor. This ensures the streaming services properly report any royalties accrued on those tracks to the MLC for payment to the composition’s original publishers & songwriters
The process to properly mark your song as a cover in your digital distributor varies by service. 

Then for adding cover songs to physical albums; this is once again outside of the MLC’s realm.
To legally release a cover song in a physical format, you must directly pay for the mechanical license to do so. This normally means paying the statutory royalty, which is currently 12.4¢ per copy, via the Harry Fox Agency in a more traditional setup, or, for the independent artist, through a more user-friendly modern service like EasySong. 

The composition’s original Publisher & Songwriter are then paid these royalties via their PRO.

As an easy example: if you want to make 1,000 CDs and one song is a cover, making those CDs would cost you an additional $127 in Mechanical Licensing ($0.127 x 1,000 = $127).  
You can also purchase additional mechanical licenses after the fact should you want to make more physical copies down the line. 

How to collect mechanical royalties from the MLC

To join the MLC, sign up in their portal and verify your identity as prompted. 

After, you will be able to “Create a Member” to start managing your catalog. 

You can search for and file a claim for existing songs, or, you can also submit your recordings if they aren't already in the system.   

*you will need your Writer & Publisher IPI or CAE numbers that were made in the previous PRO step in-order to properly assign ownership of your songs in the MLC portal.

Once you are fully enrolled in the MLC & have claimed your works; the MLC pays out royalties monthly, but you won't receive each month's payment until approximately 75 days after the end of each calendar month.
Their full payment timeline is available here.

Possible bug note: For some reason the accepted formatting IPI numbers in the MLC is annoyingly finicky. For our IPI numbers generated in ASCAP, the MLC can only seem to match the correct Writer or Publisher account to a song when a 0 is added before the rest of the IPI number. However this extra 0 is then removed by the system when viewing the songs in your catalog. 
This also occurs If you use the Bulk Upload template for your songs. The Writer and Publisher IPIs must be entered with an additional 0 ahead of the number, but the spreadsheet will automatically hide the 0 once you exit the cell. Don’t try to change the sheet formatting to make this 0 visible again or the bulk upload will show each IPI number as invalid.