 | |
| Industry | Music publishing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2018 |
| Headquarters | United States |
Area served | United States |
Key people | Kris Ahrend (CEO) |
| Website | themlc |
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is a nonprofit organization established under the Music Modernization Act of 2018. [1] It was created to issue blanket mechanical licences for qualified streaming services in the United States, such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal. [2]
In 2020, The MLC announced that four music data companies had joined its Data Quality Initiative (DQI), including: Blokur, Exactuals, Music Data Services, and TuneRegistry. [3] This move was made to ensure the accuracy of their musical works data in its current database.
As of January 2021, the MLC began paying royalties to rights owners. [4] In October 2022, it was reported that the MLC had paid almost $700 million in blanket royalties to songwriters and publishers. [5] [6]
The digital services that use the MLC have a legal obligation to spend $33.5 million on their start-up costs and $28.5 million on their first-year operating costs. [7]
To resolve the issue of music creators not getting paid for their work, the MLC built a publicly accessible musical works database and portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. This is so that when their music is played on streaming services, the generated royalties are collected from digital service providers and distributed to the appropriate songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. [8]
On the 6th December 2023, The MLC announced their Supplemental Matching Network, which initially consists of five companies (Blokur, Jaxsta, Pex, Salt and SX Works, a SoundExchange company) that will provide data matching services to complement and enhance The MLC’s existing matching processes and capabilities. [9] [10]
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadcasters, and digital streaming services.
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is a performance rights organization in the United States. It collects blanket license fees from businesses that use music, entitling those businesses to play or sync any songs from BMI's repertoire of over 22.4 million musical works. On a quarterly basis, BMI distributes the money to songwriters, composers, and music publishers as royalties to those members whose works have been performed.
Copyrights can either be licensed or assigned by the owner of the copyright. A copyright collective is a non-governmental body created by copyright law or private agreement which licenses copyrighted works on behalf of the authors and engages in collective rights management. Copyright societies track all the events and venues where copyrighted works are used and ensure that the copyright holders listed with the society are remunerated for such usage. The copyright society publishes its own tariff scheme on its websites and collects a nominal administrative fee on every transaction.
PRS for Music Limited is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 160,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2009, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music.
A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.
APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).
Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. Music licensing is intended to ensure that the owners of copyrights on musical works are compensated for certain uses of their work. A purchaser has limited rights to use the work without a separate agreement.
In copyright law, a mechanical license is a license from the holder of a copyright of a composition or musical work, to another party to create a "cover song", reproduce, or sample a portion of the original composition. It applies to copyrighted work that is neither a free/open source item nor in the public domain.
Music publishing is the business of creating, producing and distributing printed musical scores, parts, and books in various types of music notation, while ensuring that the composer, songwriter and other creators receive credit and royalties or other payment. This article outlines the early history of the industry.
SoundExchange is an American non-profit collective rights management organization founded in 2003. It is the sole organization designated by the U.S. Congress to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound recordings. It pays featured and non-featured artists and master rights owners for the non-interactive use of sound recordings under the statutory licenses set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 112 and 17 U.S.C. § 114. As of 2023, the company serves a community of over 650,000 creators worldwide, offering various products and services.
Downtown Music Holdings (is a global independent rights management and music services company. Based in New York City, Downtown comprises 10 businesses: Downtown Music Publishing, Downtown Artist & Label Services, Downtown Neighbouring Rights, FUGA, CD Baby, Songtrust, Sheer Publishing Africa, found.ee, Curve and Soundrop. All divisions live under the Downtown Music Holdings umbrella and are split between two verticals, Creator and Business. In addition to its New York headquarters, Downtown has global offices across six continents including Los Angeles, London, Paris, Nashville, Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Tokyo.
The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. (CMRRA) is a music licensing agency based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1975, CMRRA is a music licensing collective representing music rights-holders who range in size from large multinational music publishers to individual songwriters. On their behalf, CMRRA issues licences to individuals or organizations for the reproduction of songs on various media.
Music Reports provides music rights licensing, administration, royalty accounting, and software development and hosting. Music Reports operates the largest registry of worldwide music rights and related business information.
Collective rights management is the licensing of copyright and related rights by organisations acting on behalf of rights owners. Collective management organisations (CMOs), sometimes also referred to as collecting societies, typically represent groups of copyright and related rights owners, i.e.; authors, performers, publishers, phonogram producers, film producers and other rights holders. At the least, rights holders authorize collective rights management organizations to monitor the use of their works, negotiate licenses with prospective users, document correct right management data and information, collect remuneration for use of copyrighted works, ensuring a fair distribution of such remuneration amongst rightsholders. CMOs also act on legal mandates. Governmental supervision varies across jurisdictions.
United States v. American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) et al., No. 09-0539, 2010 WL 3749292, was a United States Court of Appeals case involving copyright liability for third-party vendors that provide online music download services. In particular, the Second Circuit ruled that music downloads do not constitute public performances, upholding the district court's decision and consequently preventing ASCAP from claiming higher royalty fees from Yahoo! and RealNetworks for downloaded music. However, the Second Circuit disagreed with the district court's method of fee assessment and remanded the case for further proceedings. ASCAP appealed the decision and requested a writ of certiorari for judicial review in the Supreme Court.
The Jamaica Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers (JACAP) is a Jamaican not-for-profit membership collective management organization which was established in 1998. JACAP administers the public performance and, if assigned also, the mechanical (reproductive) rights and synchronization rights of lyricists (authors), music composers and music publishers in Jamaica. JACAP is a member of the umbrella organisation for copyright societies CISAC - The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. JACAP is also a founding member of The Association of Caribbean Copyright Societies (ACCS).
The Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) is a South Korean non-profit copyright collective for musical works, administering public performance and broadcasting rights, and mechanical recording and reproduction rights. Founded in 1964, it is the second collective rights management organization for musical works in Asia, after JASRAC in Japan. It is also one of the largest in Asia, with over 40,000 members. In 2021, it collected ₩289 billion in licensing fees and distributed ₩256 billion in royalties to its members.
The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act or MMA is United States legislation signed into law on October 11, 2018 aimed to modernize copyright-related issues for music and audio recordings due to new forms of technology such as digital streaming. It is a consolidation of three separate bills introduced during the 115th United States Congress.
Blokur is a music rights and data platform based in London which provides global music reporting and licensing for digital products and services. The company is an official partner of the MLC.
