Guide
The MLC for Songwriters: US Streaming Mechanicals
The MLC collects every US streaming mechanical royalty owed to songwriters. Registration mechanics, the unmatched pool, payout cadence, and gotchas.
The Mechanical Licensing Collective was created by the Music Modernization Act to issue a blanket mechanical license to US streaming services and pay writers.
If your song is not in the MLC database, the mechanical portion of a US Spotify stream has nowhere to go. It sits unmatched, then is redistributed.
Found Royalties registers your works with the MLC as part of standard onboarding. You can also join the MLC yourself for free — we still recommend an admin so the rest of the world is filed too.