The MLC Has Distributed $3bn+ To Songwriters And Publishers To Date

“The MLC has become the largest single source of U.S. digital revenue for songwriters and publishers — distributing more than $3 billion in royalties since launching operations, at no cost to our Members.” – Alisa Coleman, The MLC

Music Business Worldwide reported that The MLC has “confirmed that it has exceeded $3 billion in royalties distributed to publishers and songwriters since launching full operations in 2021.”

I’m proud to work with a team of talented and passionate people at The MLC who care deeply about getting songwriters and music publishers paid. And I am also proud to support music rights and royalty tech founders who invest endless hours and limited resources to create a positive impact on the livelihoods of their customers — the world’s independent music creators.

Prior to joining The MLC, exactly 10 years ago this month in October 2015, I founded several startups to address the “black box” issue, including TuneRegistry (with co-founders Jesse Morris, Kara Lorraine McGehee, and Shane Zilinskas), which enabled music creators to, for the first time, fully control the administration of their songs and recordings in the United States, and a year later in October 2016, I founded RoyaltyClaim, which innovated the Section 115 NOI (compulsory mechanical license) lookup and rightsholder notification process and was the world’s first multi-territory search engine of unclaimed music royalties.

At the time, there were no society-backed public data feeds or relevant APIs that enabled music rights and royalty tech companies to access transparent data regarding song ownership, share claims, unmatched recordings, and unclaimed royalties making it nearly impossible for founders to build robust solutions to support songwriters and publishers with royalty forensics, catalog reconciliation, and identifying and resolving issues that lead to unclaimed royalties. And there were few societies with departments dedicated to engaging with tech founders who dared to invest in these pursuits.

Today, I am proud to say that The MLC has changed that. As an organization with a department dedicated to interacting with and supporting music rights and royalty tech companies, we have empowered hundreds of companies around the world with unprecedent access to data that has informed business decisions and fueled the creation of new features that help their customers get paid.

As a former music rights and royalty tech founder myself, I couldn’t be prouder to head that department, to manage data programs and strategic outreach efforts, and to interact with and support hundreds of founders around the world who’s collective efforts has contributed to The MLC reaching this breakthrough milestone of $3Bn in royalties distributed.

To all of the music rights and royalty tech founders out there who have called on my team, met with me, invited me to set in hundreds of hours of demos and strategy sessions over the past 5 years, this is a special shoutout and thank you to you for being the innovators effecting change on the ground!