Songwriters of North America Argues for Industry Coalition to Form the MLC

The Songwriters of North America has submitted a letter to the Copyright Office arguing why its industry consensus coalition, which also includes the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Nashville Songwriters Association International, should be chosen to form the mechanical licensing collective (MLC) created by the Music Modernization Act.

The MLC will collect mechanical publishing royalties from on-demand digital services like Spotify and Apple Music and disburse it to the copyright owners. The MLC is also charged with creating and managing a database that matches recordings to composition so that the money gets to the rightful owners.

“This group of highly respected professionals, with their ingrained knowledge of every painstaking negotiation, of every nuanced detail and amendment as they were made in real time, can likely avoid missteps and workarounds, which would ultimately result in litigation, thus delaying the end goal of getting songwriters and publishers paid this new mechanical streaming right which we worked so hard to obtain,” the letter states.