Unmatched and unclaimed royalties at The MLC

As of its February 2026 distribution, The MLC held about $614.9 million in blanket royalties that it had not paid. Of this money, about $328.2 million was unmatched, $260.5 million was unclaimed and $26.2 million was held (The MLC, 2025 Annual Royalty Recap). From April 2027, The MLC plans to pay the oldest of this money to rightsholders by market share. For the January 2021 money, a claim must be in The MLC database by its snapshot on or about February 10, 2027.

What is The MLC?

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) collects mechanical royalties in the United States under the blanket license of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). Digital service providers (DSPs), such as streaming services, pay these royalties to The MLC. The MLC then pays the owners of each musical work (the song).

What is an unmatched royalty at The MLC?

A DSP reports each use of a sound recording to The MLC. The MLC then tries to match the recording to a registered musical work in its database. Until it finds a match, the royalty for that use is unmatched. The MLC uses this term for uses that DSPs reported after January 1, 2021.

Unmatched blanket royalties were about $328.2 million. This is 7.8 percent of all the royalty pools that The MLC processed.

What is an unclaimed royalty at The MLC?

An unclaimed royalty is for a use that The MLC matched to a registered work. But one or more shares of that work have no claim. The royalties for those shares are unclaimed.

Unclaimed blanket royalties were about $260.5 million. This is 6.2 percent of the royalty pools that The MLC processed.

What is a held royalty at The MLC?

A held royalty is for a matched work that The MLC put on hold. The MLC gives these reasons: ownership disputes, legal holds, overclaim holds, statutory termination holds and payee reviews. Held blanket royalties were about $26.2 million. This is 0.6 percent of the royalty pools that The MLC processed.

How much of the money does The MLC match?

For its 2025 distributions, the average match rate was 85 percent when The MLC first paid them. After The MLC reprocessed the usage, the average rate for the same distributions was 90 percent (2025 Annual Royalty Recap).

On September 30, 2026, The MLC said that its match rate was more than 92 percent. This rate covers the royalties that it processed through its September 2026 distribution (The MLC news release).

Why does a catalog miss MLC royalties?

  • The work has no registration at The MLC. The MLC cannot match a use to a work that is not in its database.
  • The recording has no match to the work. The MLC matches automatically first. The recordings that remain unmatched go into its Matching Tool, by their ISRC (International Standard Recording Code). A member can find them there and propose the match (The MLC Help Center).
  • A share has no claim. When no owner claims a share of a registered work, the royalties for that share stay unclaimed.
  • Two owners claim the same share. The MLC lists ownership disputes and overclaim holds as reasons to hold royalties.

How does a publisher or administrator claim unmatched MLC royalties?

The MLC gives these steps (The MLC, How to prepare):

  1. Become a member of The MLC and use the Member Hub. A songwriter who has a publisher or administrator uses the Songwriter Hub.
  2. Register each work that is not in The MLC database. Use the Works Registration Tools.
  3. Claim your shares of works that are already registered. Use the Claiming Tool to find works with shares that have no claim.
  4. Match the recordings to your works. Use the Matching Tool to search the unmatched recordings and to propose a match. For a large catalog, a member can email The MLC a CSV file of ISRCs and MLC song codes (Bulk match submission process).
  5. Do these checks again regularly. DSPs keep sending new usage data, so new unmatched recordings appear.

The MLC reviews each proposed match. A change affects your royalties only after The MLC captures it in its monthly database snapshot. When The MLC accepts a claim on a share, it pays the royalties that it held for past periods. It adds statutory interest (The MLC, Market share FAQs).

Is there a deadline to claim unmatched MLC royalties?

Yes. A claim does not get back the royalties for a period that was already in a market share distribution (The MLC, Market share FAQs). The first planned cutoff is the database snapshot on or about February 10, 2027. It sets which January 2021 money goes into the April 2027 distribution.

The MMA tells The MLC to hold unmatched royalties for not less than 3 years after it receives them (17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)). After that, The MLC must pay the money that remains to rightsholders by their relative market share.

The MLC plans to start these market share distributions in April 2027. It plans to pay one month of remaining blanket royalties each month, and to start with January 2021 usage. It will share the money pro rata, song by song, for each DSP and offering. It will add interest at the statutory rate (The MLC, Market share distributions).

Each market share distribution uses the same monthly database snapshot as the regular distribution. The MLC tells rightsholders to act well before the February 2027 snapshot. Processing times can change (The MLC, Market share FAQs).

The law sets a floor for songwriters. A copyright owner can get a market share payment for the works of a songwriter. It must then pay that songwriter at least 50 percent of that payment (17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)).

How does Record find and claim this money?

Record is independent rights and royalty infrastructure. No label owns Record. For each work, Record shows who owns it, where it is registered, what it earned and what is missing. Record then registers the missing works, claims the missing shares and collects the money.

Ask Record to check your catalog.

Sources