The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC)

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) is a nonprofit organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office pursuant to the historic Music Modernization Act of 2018.

In January 2021, The MLC began administering blanket mechanical licenses to eligible streaming and download services (digital service providers or DSPs) in the United States. The MLC collects the royalties due under those licenses from the DSPs and pays songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. 

The MLC has built a publicly accessible musical works database, as well as a portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. These tools help ensure that creators and music publishers are paid properly.  

Our Mission

The MLC will strive to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time.

Our Principles

The MLC is founded on four guiding principles that underpin our work, our team and our operations:

We strive for EXCELLENCE.

We set clear standards for our team. We measure our performance regularly. We value collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. By doing so, we will lead and shape the future of the music industry.

We embrace DIVERSITY.

We are passionate about building a diverse and inclusive team of people with different backgrounds, views, and experiences. We know this makes our team stronger and better enables us to serve the needs of our diverse Membership.

We are committed to TRANSPARENCY.

By approaching our work with integrity, communicating honestly, and welcoming feedback, we will build and maintain the trust of those we serve.

SERVICE is at the heart of everything we do.

We recognize that each of our Members is unique. We approach each interaction with enthusiasm and empathy. We define success one person at a time.