Mechanical Royalties: The MLC, the Statutory Rate, and How Mechanicals Work Everywhere Else

This page is a reference, not legal or financial advice. It describes what the statutes, regulations and the named organisations' own publications say; it does not tell you what to do about your situation.

A mechanical royalty is money owed to the writer of a song for the copying of that song — pressing it onto a record, encoding it into a download, or transmitting it as a stream. It is not the money the recording earns, and it is not the performance royalty your PRO pays you. It is a third, separate stream, generated by a separate exclusive right, collected by a separate organisation, on a separate schedule.

If nobody has ever told you that, you are the normal case. A distributor delivers recordings; it does not register compositions. A performing rights organisation collects for public performance; it does not collect US digital mechanicals. Between those two, in the United States, sits the Mechanical Licensing Collective — and if you have not registered your songs with it, the money it holds for you does not stop existing. It sits in an interest-bearing account for at least three years and is then distributed to somebody else, lawfully, with no further recourse for you.

The two copyrights, and the three royalties

Every commercially released track sits on two separate copyrights: the composition, the song as written, owned by the writers and their publishers; and the sound recording, one fixed performance of it, owned by whoever made or paid for the master. They are separate property, can be owned by different people, and a stream generates income against both at once.

The mechanical right is the reproduction and distribution right. The performance right is a different one. A streaming service in the US needs both: a licence from a PRO to perform the song publicly, and a licence under Section 115 to reproduce and distribute it. That is why one play produces two separate publishing payments, from two separate organisations, months apart, on statements that do not reference each other.

ASCAP states the split plainly: mechanicals are "separate from – and in addition to – the performance royalties you receive from ASCAP" (ASCAP). The MLC states the converse boundary: it "is not involved in any other types of licenses or royalties, including public performance licenses or royalties, synchronization licenses or royalties, or record royalties" (The MLC FAQ).

Nobody is covering for anybody else. If you write and record your own songs and you have only a distributor, you are collecting one of the three.

How one stream actually splits

The US rules do not compute a per-stream mechanical rate. They compute a pool for each offering each month, then divide it by plays. The mechanism is set out in 37 CFR § 385.21.

Step 1 — the all-in royalty. For most offerings, the greater of (a) a percentage of Service Provider Revenue and (b) a "TCC prong" figure based on what the service pays the record companies. TCC is Total Content Cost — the recording side's take.

Step 2 — subtract performance royalties. The service subtracts "the total amount of Performance Royalties that the Service Provider has expensed or will expense pursuant to public performance licenses" for that offering. This is the most misunderstood feature of the US system: the headline percentage is an all-in publishing number covering mechanical and performance. The mechanical is what remains after the PROs are paid.

Step 3 — apply the floor. The payable pool is the greater of the Step 2 result or a per-subscriber royalty floor.

Step 4 — allocate per work. The MLC divides the payable pool by total plays for that offering, then multiplies by each work's plays. Tracks over five minutes are weighted upward — 1.2 plays for 5:01–6:00, rising 0.2 per minute to 2.0 at 9:01–10:00, and then continuing to add 0.2 plays for each additional minute or fraction thereof beyond ten minutes (§ 385.21(c)(6)). There is no cap.

A worked example

The arithmetic below uses the real 2026 statutory percentages and floors with illustrative revenue and cost inputs. The percentages are sourced; the dollar inputs are assumptions chosen to show the shape of the calculation, because no service publishes its per-offering TCC or performance-royalty expense.

Take one standalone portable subscription at $11.99/month, treating the whole of it as Service Provider Revenue.

• Step 1a — revenue prong. 15.3% of $11.99 = $1.834 (15.3% is the 2026 figure in Table 1 to § 385.21(b)(1)).
• Step 1b — TCC prong. For a standalone portable subscription, the lesser of 26.2% of TCC or $1.10 per subscriber. Assume $6.50 of the $11.99 goes to record companies: 26.2% × $6.50 = $1.703, capped at $1.10.
• Step 1 result. Greater of $1.834 and $1.10 = $1.834.
• Step 2 — subtract performance royalties. Assume $0.60 per subscriber expensed to PROs for this offering: $1.834 − $0.60 = $1.234.
• Step 3 — floor. The floor here is 60 cents per subscriber per accounting period (§ 385.21(d)(3)). $1.234 > $0.60, so the calculated figure stands.
• Step 4 — allocate. That $1.234 joins the pool for every other subscriber on the offering, and the total is divided by every play on that offering that month.

So of that $11.99: $1.83 is the all-in publishing royalty (statutory for 2026), of which roughly $0.60 goes to PROs as performance and $1.23 to the MLC as mechanical; $6.50 is assumed to go to the recording side; and the remainder stays with the service, payment processing and tax.

The proportions are in the right region. Spotify states it pays "roughly two-thirds of every dollar generated from music back to artists' and songwriters' rights holders," and that a per-stream rate "isn't actually how anyone gets paid – not on Spotify, or on any major streaming service"; payment is by streamshare, your share of total streams (Spotify Loud & Clear).

Two things follow, and both matter more than the numbers.

First: the recording side is several times the mechanical side, and it is not statutory. The composition percentage is fixed by regulation; the recording percentage is whatever was negotiated. A writer-performer who owns both collects both, from two places, having done two different sets of paperwork.

Second: your mechanical share is a share of a pool, not a rate. The pool moves with the service's revenue, its content costs, its performance-royalty expense and its total play count. Anyone quoting a fixed mechanical cents-per-stream is quoting the output of last month's division, not an input.

The US framework: Section 115, the MMA, and the blanket licence

The United States is unusual in having a compulsory mechanical licence at all. Section 115 says that once a musical work has been distributed to the public in phonorecords in the US with the copyright owner's authority, anyone else may make and distribute their own recording of it without asking permission, provided they comply with the statute and pay the rate the government sets. The songwriter cannot say no. That is why cover versions need no negotiation in the US, and why the rate is a matter of federal regulation rather than contract. The rate is set by the Copyright Royalty Board — three Copyright Royalty Judges at the Library of Congress — in numbered proceedings named "Phonorecords."

The Music Modernization Act of 2018 rebuilt the digital half of this. Before it, a digital service had to serve a Notice of Intention on each copyright owner, work by work — impossible at catalogue scale, and the source of a great deal of litigation. The MMA replaced that with a single blanket licence covering everything a service makes available, administered by one designated collective. The Copyright Office "no longer accepts section 115 notices of intention to obtain a compulsory license for making a digital phonorecord delivery of a musical work," but "will continue to accept notices of intention with respect to phonorecords that are not digital phonorecord deliveries (e.g., for CDs, vinyl records, tapes, and other physical media)" (U.S. Copyright Office).

That sentence contains the whole shape of the US system. Digital mechanicals go through the MLC. Physical and permanent-download mechanicals do not. If someone presses vinyl of your song, or sells a download of a cover of it, that licence is obtained directly from you or your publisher, or through a licensing agent, or by NOI — never through the MLC.

The MLC began administering blanket licences in January 2021 (The MLC FAQ). The Copyright Office reviews the designation periodically; in the first such review it concluded that "the current designations for the entities operating as the digital licensee coordinator and mechanical licensing collective should be continued," effective 3 June 2026 (Federal Register, 3 June 2026).

The MLC takes no commission. It "does not keep a portion of the mechanical royalties it collects to cover its operating costs"; those costs "are paid for by DSPs through an administrative assessment set by the United States Copyright Royalty Board"; and it "distributes 100% of the mechanical royalties it collects" (The MLC). Membership is free: "It's free and easy to join" (The MLC).

The current US rates, and exactly which years they cover

Physical phonorecords and permanent downloads

This is the famous "penny rate." Under Phonorecords IV it is no longer fixed for five years; it is adjusted annually for inflation.

For 2026 the rate is 13.1 cents per work, or 2.52 cents per minute of playing time or fraction thereof, whichever is larger. The Copyright Royalty Judges published this cost-of-living adjustment on 1 December 2025, applying the change in CPI-U between the November 2022 base (298.012) and the most recent index published before 1 December 2025 (324.800, the October 2025 CPI-U) to the base rates of 12 cents and 2.31 cents; the adjusted rates apply from 1 January to 31 December 2026 (Federal Register, 1 December 2025; 37 CFR § 385.11).

The per-minute alternative is why a nine-minute track earns more than a three-minute one on a physical release: 9 × 2.52¢ = 22.68¢, which exceeds 13.1¢.

This rate is recalculated every year. A page quoting "12 cents" or "9.1 cents" is quoting a superseded figure; check § 385.11 and the current year's Federal Register notice before relying on any number, including this one.

Interactive streaming and limited downloads

Set by Phonorecords IV, covering 2023 through 2027 (Federal Register, 30 December 2022).

All-in percentage of Service Provider Revenue (Table 1 to § 385.21(b)(1)):

TCC prong (Table 2 to § 385.21(b)(1)) — the alternative measure, based on what the service pays the recording side:

Royalty floors (§ 385.21(d)) — applied after performance royalties are subtracted:

A family plan counts as 1.75 subscribers and a student plan as 0.5 subscribers for these calculations (§ 385.21(e)).

What happens after 2027 is not settled

Phonorecords IV expires on 31 December 2027. The Phonorecords V proceeding covers 1 January 2028 to 31 December 2032, and as of this page's publication date it is not resolved.

What is known: on 10 July 2026 the Copyright Royalty Judges published a notice of proposed settlement covering Subpart B configurations only — physical phonorecords, permanent downloads, ringtones and music bundles — under which those rates "should not be amended except for continuing inflation adjustments to the rates for physical phonorecords and permanent downloads." Comments and objections were due by 10 August 2026 (Federal Register, 10 July 2026).

Objections were filed. Word Collections and the Songwriters Guild of America jointly called the proposal "demonstrably unreasonable," arguing it would reset the inflation base to 12 cents rather than continuing from 13.1 cents; Eight Mile Style described it as "effectively a rate freeze, unmoored from economic reality." Songwriters of North America, the Recording Academy and the Association of Independent Music Publishers supported it. The Judges will decide (Digital Music News, 11 August 2026).

What is not known, and should not be guessed at: the streaming rate for 2028 onward. The July 2026 notice addresses Subpart B, not the Subpart C streaming rates, and no Subpart C rate for 2028–2032 has been adopted. A percentage quoted for 2028 is a proposal, a projection, or an error.

Registering works with the MLC

The MLC pays on registered musical works, matched to reported sound recordings. Your distributor delivers the recording. Nobody delivers the composition unless you or your publisher does it.

Who should join. "Anyone entitled to collect digital audio mechanical royalties in the U.S." — self-administered songwriters, publishers and publishing administrators, and collective management organisations (The MLC). If you have a publisher or administrator, they are the Member and they register your works; you can still create a Portal account for the Songwriter Hub, which lets you view and export your catalogue and suggest recording matches.

What registration requires. Registering a work singly in the MLC Portal, only the Work Title field is strictly required, plus at least one writer with a Composer/Author or Composer role and a publisher entity with a collection share (MLC Portal help). IPI numbers, ISWCs, alternative titles and linked recordings are technically optional.

Treat almost none of that as optional in practice. A registration containing only a title and a name is one the matching engine has to guess at. What makes a work matchable:

• Every writer, with their IPI number. Names are ambiguous; IPIs are not.
• Shares that total 100% and agree with what your co-writers filed. A work registered 50/50 by you and 60/40 by your co-writer is in conflict, and conflicted shares do not pay until it is resolved.
• The recordings, by ISRC — what the DSPs report usage against. Supplying the link yourself removes the guesswork, and Members can also "suggest matches between sound recordings and those musical works" after the fact (The MLC).
• The ISWC, if the work already has one.
• Search before you register, which is the MLC's own guidance, to prevent duplicates.

Bulk options. Beyond single registration, the MLC accepts a Common Works Registration file and a Bulk Work Registration template through the Member Hub (The MLC).

Timing. DSPs send usage data and royalties to the MLC monthly; the MLC matches, then pays monthly (The MLC FAQ). Register before release where you can. Registering afterwards still works — royalties accrued to an unmatched work are payable once it is claimed, subject to the limit in the next section.

Black box: unmatched and unclaimed royalties

When usage is reported for a work the MLC cannot match to a registration, the money does not vanish and it does not go to the DSP. It is held. The statute is precise about what happens next.

Held, with interest. The MLC must hold accrued royalties for unmatched works "for a period of not less than 3 years after the date on which the funds were received," in an interest-bearing account earning monthly interest at the federal short-term rate "for the benefit of copyright owners entitled to payment of such accrued royalties" (17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)(H)).

Claimable — until it isn't. When the owner of an unmatched work is identified and located, the MLC pays the accrued royalties plus proportionate interest — but only "provided that accrued royalties for the musical work (or share thereof) have not yet been included in a distribution pursuant to subparagraph (J)(i)" (§ 115(d)(3)(I)).

Then distributed by market share. After the holding period, unclaimed accrued royalties are distributed "in a transparent and equitable manner based on data indicating the relative market shares of such copyright owners" (§ 115(d)(3)(J)(i)(II)). In plain terms: money nobody claimed is shared out in proportion to the money everybody else did claim. Large catalogues receive most of it, because market share is what it is measured on. That is what Congress wrote — and it means the deadline is real.

Where this stands now. The MLC states it plans to begin market share distributions in early 2027, releasing one month of remaining blanket royalties per monthly distribution cycle starting with January 2021 data — holding 2021 royalties for six years, twice the statutory minimum. As of January 2026, less than $7 million remained unmatched and unclaimed from January 2021, against a 94 percent match rate for all 2021 usage; the MLC reports having processed over $4 billion in royalties overall (The MLC).

Historical unmatched royalties are a separate pot: royalties digital services accrued before the blanket licence and transferred to the MLC. The MLC reports approximately $397 million transferred covering 2007–2020, of which over $317 million has been matched and over $229 million distributed (The MLC); its earlier account of the transfer describes $426.9 million across 21 digital service providers (The MLC). The figures come from different pages and different reporting moments; the dashboards are the current source, and this page does not attempt to reconcile them.

What to do about it. Search Missing Member Lookup, the MLC's database of rightsholders who are not yet Members and may be owed US digital audio mechanicals (The MLC), then search the public musical works database for your own titles. If a work of yours is registered by somebody else, with wrong splits, or twice, you want to know now — not after a market share distribution has run against that period.

Why identifiers and split sheets decide whether you get paid

Mechanical royalties are matched by database join. Every failure below is a join that did not complete.

ISWC — International Standard Musical Work Code. ISO 15707. Identifies the composition, not the recording: one song, one ISWC, however many recordings exist of it. You cannot mint one yourself. ISWCs are allocated by Registration Agencies, typically CMOs; "at least one of the creators must be affiliated to the Registration Agency," and allocation requires "the Original Title and the IPI Name Numbers and Roles of all creators included in the work" (ISWC). CISAC reports 54 Registration Agencies using ISWC and over 52 million unique works carrying one (CISAC).

IPI — Interested Party Information. The number identifying you, as writer or as publisher, across every society in the world. ASCAP describes it as "a unique, international identification number, usually 9–11 digits long," used by most of the world's PROs "to link you to your musical works, so we can track performances of your music and pay royalties to the right people," and states that an IPI "is immediately assigned when you join ASCAP" (ASCAP). You get an IPI by joining a society; there is no separate application.

A writer who also acts as their own publisher typically ends up with two IPIs — one writer identity, one publisher identity. Putting the wrong one in a share line puts the money on the wrong side of the writer/publisher split.

ISRC identifies the recording, and is what DSPs report usage against. The MLC's matching problem is, at bottom, connecting a reported ISRC to a registered ISWC.

The split sheet is what makes all of the above consistent. It is not a contract substitute; it is the single authoritative record from which everyone registers. Write it at the session and record every writer's legal name, IPI and society; each writer's percentage, totalling exactly 100%; the publisher for each share, if any; and the title, including alternatives.

The failure modes are dull and expensive:

Note the last row carefully. The chain runs: join a society → receive an IPI → register the work → the work receives an ISWC → the ISWC links to your recordings. A writer who has skipped step one has, without knowing it, capped what every step after it can achieve.

Publishing administration: what an admin publisher actually does

A publishing administrator does not buy your copyrights. It registers and collects on your behalf, worldwide, for a percentage. For mechanicals specifically, it:

• Registers your works with the MLC and with the mechanical societies of every territory it covers, in each one's required format.
• Obtains ISWCs through its society affiliations.
• Maintains writer, publisher and share data across dozens of databases, and pursues conflicts and duplicates.
• Collects income a self-administering writer generally cannot reach at all — most foreign mechanical and performance income, paid society-to-society or publisher-to-sub-publisher rather than direct to a foreign individual.
• Sometimes issues mechanical licences for physical releases and downloads of your songs, and chases the money.

The commission is set by contract and varies; administrators publish their rates. Songtrust, for example, publishes a one-time $100 fee per songwriter plus "an administration fee of 15% for performance royalties and 20% for non-performance (worldwide mechanical royalties) collected on your behalf" (Songtrust). Post-term collection periods, minimum terms and which territories are actually covered differ materially between administrators, and matter more than the headline percentage.

The alternatives, for a self-administering writer:

There is no universally correct answer. The framing is arithmetic: an administrator taking a percentage of foreign mechanicals you would otherwise collect nothing from is a straightforward gain; the same percentage of income you were already collecting yourself is a straightforward cost. The balance depends on where your listeners are.

One thing is not optional either way: if you have an administrator, do not also register the same works with the MLC as a self-administered writer. Duplicate registrations from different Members create exactly the conflicts described above.

Outside the United States

The US model — a compulsory licence, a statutory rate fixed by a government tribunal, a single designated collective for digital — is close to unique. In most of the world there is no compulsory mechanical licence and no statutory rate. Mechanical rights are administered by collecting societies that license users by negotiation, and many of those societies administer both performing and mechanical rights in one body, which is why the sharp US distinction between "your PRO" and "your mechanical collective" often does not exist elsewhere.

BIEM, the international organisation of mechanical rights societies, describes the position exactly: its standard agreement with IFPI "is applied by member societies to the extent that there is no compulsory licence or statutory licence in their territory." BIEM states the agreed rate for mechanical reproduction rights is "11% on the Published Price to Dealers (PPD)," and that after deductions for rebates and packaging "this results in an effective rate of 8.712% of PPD" (BIEM) — a percentage of a wholesale price, a different construction entirely from the US per-work penny rate.

United Kingdom. PRS for Music describes MCPS as the body that "represents and protects mechanical music rights for its members" and licenses "copies and reproductions of their members music," alongside PRS on the performing-rights side (PRS for Music). PRS and MCPS remain distinct memberships with distinct joining criteria — being a PRS member does not make you an MCPS member.

Germany and France. GEMA reports 107,014 members and 35.17 million works in its database (GEMA); SACEM reports 252,000 creator and publisher members and collects for use of members' works "in France and abroad" (SACEM). Both figures are updated in place on those pages; treat them as of the date you read them.

Japan. JASRAC's international page explains the reciprocal model directly: "copyright management organizations in each country conclude agreements to administer each other's works (repertoire) and become the point of contact for application procedures," with royalties flowing back through "the society he/she is affiliated with" or a Japanese sub-publisher (JASRAC).

Canada. CMRRA describes itself as "a reproduction rights agency focusing on licensing, collecting and distributing mechanical royalties for the majority of songs recorded, sold and broadcast in Canada," open to "any person, firm, or corporation that owns or administers one or more musical works in the territory of Canada," regardless of residency (CMRRA). The landscape is changing: SOCAN and SoundExchange announced on 29 July 2026 that SOCAN would acquire CMRRA (SoundExchange), and completion was reported in early September 2026 (CelebrityAccess). What that means operationally for individual affiliates has not been published in detail; check CMRRA's own site before assuming any change.

Multi-territory licensing hubs. Because European digital licensing spans dozens of territories, societies have pooled their online licensing and data operations. ICE, a joint venture between PRS, STIM and GEMA, describes itself as holding "more than 55 million musical works," with operations that "touch 250+ territories," serving "over 330,000 rightsholders," and distributing "more than €1bn in royalties to rightsholders in a consecutive 12-month period" and "more than €5bn paid in royalties since 2016" (ICE Services). Others exist on similar lines, SACEM's Armonia grouping among them. Your works are matched inside these hubs, on the data your society supplied, using IPIs and ISWCs — so the quality of your registration at home determines what a hub can pay you from abroad.

Why the US model is unusual. Elsewhere the writer's society negotiates a price and can, in principle, refuse. In the US the writer cannot refuse, and the price is set by three federal judges every five years in an adversarial proceeding. Whether that is better or worse for songwriters is contested — the Phonorecords V objections above are exactly that argument — but it is why an American writer's mechanical income is a matter of regulation and a European writer's is a matter of collective bargaining.

What to do, in order

None of this is fast, and none of it is urgent in the way a release date is urgent — which is precisely why it does not get done.

1. Join a PRO or your national society. Before anything else. This produces your IPI, and the IPI is a precondition for ISWC allocation and for clean registration everywhere. US writers: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or GMR — one society per role. Elsewhere: your national society. ASCAP assigns an IPI immediately on joining; others vary. Days to a few weeks.

2. Join The MLC, if you have US streams and no publisher. Free. If you have a publisher or administrator, skip this and use the Songwriter Hub instead. Days.

3. Agree splits in writing, per song, at the session. Legal names, IPIs, societies, percentages totalling 100%, publisher per share. Circulate and get agreement before anyone registers anything. Minutes per song — and the only step here that becomes impossible later rather than merely tedious.

4. Register the works, with your society and the MLC, before release. Titles, all writers with IPIs, shares, publishers, and the ISRCs of every recording. An hour for the first, minutes thereafter. Expect weeks, not days, before a work appears matched.

5. Confirm the recording-to-work links. After release, check your ISRCs are attached to your works in the MLC's public database; if not, suggest the matches through the Member Hub. Allow a month or two after release for usage to be reported.

6. Search for money already sitting somewhere. Run your name and titles through Missing Member Lookup and the public works database. If you released into US streaming before joining, something may well be held against your name. Do it now: the three-year holding period runs, and once a period's unclaimed royalties have gone into a market share distribution, that share is no longer payable to you.

7. Decide about foreign collection deliberately. Look at where your listeners actually are. If a meaningful share is outside your home territory, self-administration is leaving money uncollected. If your audience is essentially domestic, it may not be. Make it an arithmetic decision, not a default.

8. Re-check annually. Splits change, works get re-registered, co-writers sign publishing deals, and rates change every January. An hour a year is enough.

What this page does not tell you

Stated explicitly, because a reference that only asserts is not a reference.

• The streaming mechanical rate for 2028 and beyond. Not determined. The Phonorecords V settlement published for comment in July 2026 addresses Subpart B only — physical, downloads, ringtones, music bundles — and drew objections. No Subpart C rate for 2028–2032 has been adopted.
• The 2027 penny rate. Set by a cost-of-living adjustment expected around December 2026; not yet knowable.
• What any given service pays per stream in mechanicals. An output of a monthly division, not a rate; the inputs (Service Provider Revenue, TCC, performance-royalty expense, total plays) are not published per offering.
• Membership fees and joining criteria for the non-US societies named here. Several of those sites render fee pages only in a browser and could not be quoted from source. Check each society directly.
• What the SOCAN acquisition of CMRRA changes for individual affiliates. Announced and reported complete; the operational detail has not been published.
• MCPS's current commission rate. A 10% reduction announced in August 2022 is reported in trade press but is not stated on PRS for Music's own pages; no primary-source figure was found.
• How the MLC's two published historical-unmatched figures reconcile ($426.9m described at transfer, ~$397m reported transferred). Different pages, different reporting moments; the dashboards are the live source.

Sources

• 17 U.S.C. § 115 — Scope of exclusive rights in nondramatic musical works: Compulsory license for making and distributing phonorecords — the compulsory licence, the blanket licence, the MLC's statutory duties
• 17 U.S.C. § 115, U.S. Code (GovInfo) — verbatim text of §115(d)(3)(H) three-year holding period and interest-bearing account; §115(d)(3)(I) claiming process and its cut-off; §115(d)(3)(J) market share distribution of unclaimed accrued royalties
• U.S. Copyright Office — Section 115 Notice of Intention — the Office no longer accepts NOIs for digital phonorecord deliveries but still accepts them for physical media
• U.S. Copyright Office — Music Licensing Modernization — MMA structure, designation of the MLC and DLC, administrative assessment
• Federal Register, 3 June 2026 — Periodic Review of the Designations of the MLC and DLC — redesignation of the MLC and DLC, effective 3 June 2026
• Federal Register, 30 December 2022 — Phonorecords IV final rule — the 2023–2027 rate period
• 37 CFR § 385.21 — Royalty rates and calculations — the four-step calculation; Table 1 percentages 15.1–15.35 for 2023–2027; Table 2 TCC prong (26.2%/24.5%, 60¢ and $1.10 per-subscriber caps); §385.21(c) overtime adjustment; §385.21(d) royalty floors; §385.21(e) family and student plan weightings
• 37 CFR Part 385 Subpart C — full subpart context for the streaming rate structure
• 37 CFR § 385.11 — Royalty rates (physical phonorecords and permanent downloads) — the 2026 rate of 13.1¢ or 2.52¢ per minute, whichever is larger, and the annual CPI-U adjustment mechanism
• Federal Register, 1 December 2025 — Cost of Living Adjustment to Royalty Rates and Terms for Making and Distributing Phonorecords — the 2026 penny rate, the base rates of 12¢ and 2.31¢, and the CPI-U figures used
• Federal Register, 10 July 2026 — Phonorecords V, notice of proposed settlement — the 2028–2032 period; Subpart B settlement proposal; 10 August 2026 objection deadline
• Digital Music News, 11 August 2026 — Phonorecords V Settlement Proposal Faces Multiple Objections — who objected and on what grounds; who supported; that the Judges have yet to decide
• The MLC — Membership — who should join; that joining is free; what Members can do; Songwriter Hub; Missing Member Lookup
• The MLC — FAQ — what the MLC is; January 2021 start; monthly collection, matching and payment; the express exclusion of performance, sync and record royalties
• The MLC — Does The MLC keep a portion of royalties? — the MLC keeps no commission; funded by DSPs through the administrative assessment; distributes 100%
• The MLC — Self-Administered Songwriters — three registration routes: single, Common Works Registration file, Bulk Work Registration template
• The MLC Portal help — How to register works — required and optional fields; the instruction to search before registering
• The MLC — Market Share Distributions — market share distributions beginning early 2027; 2021 royalties held six years; under $7m unmatched from January 2021 as of January 2026; 94% match rate for 2021; over $4bn processed; ~$397m historical transferred, $317m+ matched, $229m+ distributed
• The MLC — Illuminating Black Box — $426.9m in historical unmatched royalties across 21 DSPs covering 2007–2020
• ASCAP — Are You a Self-Published Songwriter or Composer? — mechanical royalties are separate from and in addition to PRO performance royalties; who distributes which
• ASCAP — All About IPI Numbers — what an IPI is, its length, its function, and that one is assigned immediately on joining
• CISAC — International Identifiers — ISWC as ISO 15707; 54 Registration Agencies; 52+ million works with an ISWC
• ISWC — Creators and Publishers — ISWCs are allocated by Registration Agencies; affiliation requirement; IPI Name Numbers and roles required for allocation
• Spotify Loud & Clear — "I heard Spotify pays a fraction of a penny per stream. Is that true?" — roughly two-thirds of every dollar to rights holders; no per-stream rate; streamshare
• BIEM — About BIEM — the standard contract applies where there is no compulsory or statutory licence; 11% of PPD, effective 8.712% after deductions
• PRS for Music — PRS and MCPS — the two societies and the rights each administers
• GEMA — membership, database and payout figures as displayed on the English homepage
• SACEM — Creators and Publishers — 252,000 members; collection in France and abroad; distribution rules
• JASRAC — International — 118 performing-rights and 96 mechanical-rights reciprocal agreements as of March 2025; how foreign royalties route back to creators
• CMRRA — FAQ — what CMRRA is and licenses; open affiliation regardless of residency
• SoundExchange, 29 July 2026 — SOCAN & SoundExchange Announce Agreement for SOCAN to Acquire CMRRA — the announced acquisition and its stated rationale
• CelebrityAccess, 2 September 2026 — SOCAN Announces Completion of CMRRA Acquisition — completion of the acquisition
• ICE Services — About — joint venture of PRS, STIM and GEMA; 55m+ works, 250+ territories, 330,000+ rightsholders, €1bn+ distributed in a consecutive 12-month period and €5bn+ since 2016
• Songtrust — Pricing — a published administration commission: $100 one-time per songwriter, 15% on performance and 20% on worldwide mechanical royalties

Note on the worked example: the percentages, per-subscriber caps and floors used are the current statutory figures cited above. The subscription price, TCC and performance-royalty expense are illustrative assumptions chosen to show the shape of the calculation. They are not any service's published figures, and no service publishes them per offering.