Study 1 · primary sourcesStreaming services handed $397M they could not match to songwriters
In February 2021, US streaming services transferred to The MLC the songwriting royalties they had never matched to a song's owners. Two services account for three quarters of the money.
$397Mhanded over unmatched, Feb 2021
What the figure is
The Music Modernization Act set up The MLC to license and pay US mechanical royalties from streaming. Before it started, streaming services had collected royalties for songs they could not match to a songwriter or publisher. In February 2021 they transferred that money to The MLC.
The MLC lists the transfer service by service, 21 services in all. The original transfer was $424,384,786.63. After the rate adjustments of the Phono III proceeding, the current total is $397,286,418.71.
Why it happens
A streaming service receives a recording with its ISRC, title and performer. To pay the songwriting side it also needs the composition behind it: who wrote it, who publishes it and in what shares. When no registration connects the recording to a work, the royalty has nowhere to go and is set aside.
Apple Music and Spotify transferred $294.6M between them (derived), about three quarters of the total.
Who loses
Songwriters and publishers whose songs were streamed in the US before 2021 without a registration that matched the recording. The MLC has since matched most of the pool. What is left belongs to works that are still unregistered, or registered with gaps.
Most single items are small. The MLC says fewer than 5% of the recordings still unmatched have earned more than $1; the rest average between 5 and 6 cents each.
What an artist can do
- Register every released song as a work, with all writers, publishers and shares, at The MLC and at the writer's own society.
- Link each recording's ISRC to its work. That link is what lets the money find the song.
- Search the artist on Owed to see which songs have no documented composition in public databases.
Check a catalogue against the public record.
Search an artist, writer or producer, or upload a distributor report to check every streamed song.