How Does the Music Modernization Act Work?

Introduction

The Music Modernization Act (MMA) reshaped how music royalties are licensed, matched, and paid in the United States. Passed in 2018, the law was designed to address long-standing inefficiencies in a system that had not kept pace with interactive streaming, large-scale digital licensing, and increasingly fragmented ownership data.

Before the MMA, digital music services often had to secure mechanical licenses song by song, while publishers and administrators struggled with incomplete metadata, unmatched usage reports, and royalties that could not be confidently attributed. The result was delayed payments, inconsistent reporting, and significant amounts of unclaimed income.

Rather than changing copyright fundamentals, the MMA modernized the infrastructure surrounding them. It introduced a blanket mechanical licensing system for eligible digital services, created a centralized entity to administer those licenses, and established clearer rules for older sound recordings and producer royalty allocations.

For music administrators, the significance of the MMA is operational as much as legal. It changed how data must be prepared, how royalties flow from digital services, and how unmatched royalties are identified and eventually distributed. Understanding how the MMA works means understanding how modern publishing administration now functions in practice.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this guide, you will be able to:

• Explain why the Music Modernization Act was introduced and what industry problems it was designed to solve
• Identify the three statutory titles that make up the MMA and the role each one plays
• Understand how the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) fits into royalty administration workflows
• Describe how royalty flows changed for digital mechanical licensing after the MMA
• Explain how metadata quality affects matching, royalty allocation, and black box distributions
• Recognize how the MMA affects songwriters, publishers, DSPs, producers, and legacy sound recordings
• Identify modern challenges that still exist despite the MMA, including AI-assisted metadata and global licensing friction

Overview

The Music Modernization Act is a federal law comprising three separate legislative titles, each addressing a different weakness in the music rights ecosystem.

Title I modernized mechanical licensing for musical works, particularly for interactive streaming and digital downloads. This section created the blanket licensing framework and led to the formation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), which now plays a central role in U.S. digital mechanical royalty administration.

Title II, known as the CLASSICS Act, extended federal protection and royalty pathways to certain pre-1972 sound recordings that previously existed in a fragmented legal landscape. This was particularly important for older catalogs and legacy recordings that continued generating digital usage.

Title III, the AMP Act, addressed royalty allocation for producers, mixers, and sound engineers, creating a statutory process for these contributors to receive a share of certain digital performance royalties.

In practice, the MMA changed how modern digital royalties are handled at scale. Interactive streaming services no longer work through the older song-by-song mechanical licensing model, and administrators now operate within a centralized system built around large metadata sets, blanket licensing, and royalty matching. This shift is why the law continues to affect day-to-day publishing workflows, DSP reporting, and unmatched royalty recovery long after its passage.

​​Table of Contents

Why the Music Modernization Act Was Needed

By the time streaming became the dominant form of music consumption, the U.S. mechanical licensing system was already struggling under a framework built for physical formats and downloads. Digital services had to identify and license musical works individually, which became increasingly impractical as catalogs expanded into tens of millions of tracks and ownership data remained fragmented across publishers, administrators, and rights databases.

The issue went beyond the sheer number of songs being streamed. The real friction came from the condition of the ownership data itself. Writer names were entered differently across systems, publisher details were incomplete, and split percentages often conflicted from one database to another. A service might know a recording had been streamed millions of times, yet still fail to identify the correct composition owner with enough confidence to issue payment.

As those matching failures multiplied, large pools of unmatched mechanical royalties began to build. For songwriters and publishers, the frustrating part was that the money technically existed, but there was little transparency around why it had not been paid. In some cases, the problem was incomplete metadata. In others, it stemmed from unresolved ownership disputes or gaps in historical catalog records that had never been cleaned up for digital use.

At the same time, digital platforms faced growing legal exposure. Several major streaming services were sued in the years leading up to the MMA because the traditional licensing system had become too fragmented to operate reliably at streaming scale. The law still assumed a level of song-by-song identification that no longer reflected how music was delivered, reported, or consumed.

The MMA addressed this by shifting the burden away from repeated title-by-title licensing and into a centralized blanket framework built for large catalog environments. That change mattered not only because it reduced licensing friction for digital services, but because it gave publishers, administrators, and songwriters a more structured way to surface bad data, resolve unmatched royalties, and maintain ownership records that could function inside modern reporting systems.

For music administration teams, the practical effect was immediate: metadata stopped being a back-office detail and became one of the main determinants of whether royalties could move through the system correctly.

Historical Background

The Music Modernization Act did not emerge in isolation. It was the result of decades of tension between copyright law, licensing infrastructure, and the pace of music technology.

The foundation of U.S. mechanical licensing can be traced back to the Copyright Act of 1909, which introduced the compulsory mechanical license after the rise of player pianos and piano rolls raised concerns about how musical works could be mechanically reproduced. At the time, the law was built around physical manufacturing, where each reproduction could be counted and licensed in a relatively controlled way.

That framework remained largely intact even as formats changed from vinyl to cassettes, CDs, and digital downloads. The transition became more strained in the early 2000s with the rise of services such as iTunes, which still fit reasonably well within a per-download licensing structure.

The real break came with the growth of interactive streaming. By the time Spotify launched in the United States in 2011, music consumption had shifted away from unit-based purchases and toward continuous on-demand access. Mechanical licensing law, however, still depended on title-by-title notices and ownership matching systems that assumed a much smaller and more stable catalog environment.

By the mid-2010s, the scale problem had become impossible to ignore. Major lawsuits, including David Lowery v. Spotify in 2015, highlighted how incomplete metadata and fragmented publishing records were preventing royalties from reaching the correct songwriters and publishers. These disputes did not create the problem, but they accelerated pressure on lawmakers and industry groups to modernize the system.

Legislative momentum built quickly between 2017 and 2018, led by bipartisan support in Congress and advocacy from songwriter groups, publishers, digital services, and organizations such as the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). The result was the Music Modernization Act of 2018, signed into law by President Donald Trump on October 11, 2018.

What makes this history important is that the MMA was not simply a new royalty law. It was the legal response to more than a century of licensing rules being repeatedly stretched across technologies they were never designed to support. Understanding that progression makes the structure of the MMA much easier to follow in the sections ahead.

Legislative Timeline

The path to the Music Modernization Act moved quickly once industry consensus formed around the need to modernize digital mechanical licensing. The timeline below highlights the legislative milestones that shaped how the law moved from proposal to implementation.

• 1909 – The U.S. Copyright Act establishes the compulsory mechanical license, creating the legal foundation that would later need modernization for digital uses.
• 2011 – Spotify launches in the United States, accelerating the shift toward large-scale interactive streaming and exposing the limits of song-by-song mechanical licensing.
• 2015 – Songwriter David Lowery files a high-profile lawsuit against Spotify over unpaid and unmatched mechanical royalties, bringing industry-wide attention to licensing failures in the streaming era.
• December 2017 – The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), songwriter groups, publishers, DSPs, and other stakeholders finalize a broad framework for legislative reform.
• April 2018 – H.R. 5447, the Music Modernization Act, is formally introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Doug Collins with bipartisan support.
• April 25, 2018 – The House passes the bill unanimously, signaling rare cross-industry and bipartisan alignment on copyright reform.
• September 18, 2018 – The U.S. Senate passes the MMA by unanimous consent after incorporating related reforms, including the CLASSICS Act and AMP Act.
• October 11, 2018 – President Donald Trump signs the Music Modernization Act into law.
• 2020 – The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is officially designated and begins implementation work in preparation for launch.
• January 1, 2021 – The blanket mechanical license and centralized MLC administration system become fully operational for eligible digital services. 

Title I: The Musical Works Modernization Act

The Music Modernization Act is organized into three statutory titles, each addressing a different gap in the U.S. music rights system. Although the law is often discussed as a single reform package, each title was designed to solve a distinct operational problem affecting different stakeholders.

Title I is the operational core of the Music Modernization Act and the section that most directly changed music publishing administration in the streaming era. Its purpose was to modernize how digital mechanical royalties for musical works are licensed and processed in the United States.

Before this reform, eligible digital services had to rely on the older compulsory licensing framework under Section 115 of the Copyright Act, which required a title-by-title licensing process supported by notices of intent. That system was difficult enough in the download era, but it became increasingly unworkable once interactive streaming services began processing catalogs containing tens of millions of recordings tied to constantly changing ownership data.

The central change introduced by Title I was the blanket mechanical license. Instead of locating and licensing each musical work individually, eligible digital music providers can now obtain a single blanket license that covers the digital reproduction and distribution of musical works for qualifying uses, primarily interactive streaming and digital downloads.

This change shifted the operational burden away from repeated song-by-song licensing and toward large-scale usage reporting and ownership matching. Rather than proving every title was individually licensed before use, services now report usage at scale and fund a centralized system responsible for royalty matching and distribution.

That centralized system is the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), which was designated by the U.S. Copyright Office and became fully operational on January 1, 2021. The MLC administers blanket mechanical licenses, collects royalties from eligible digital services, matches usage reports against ownership data, and distributes royalties to publishers, administrators, and self-administered songwriters.

For music administration teams, Title I fundamentally changed the work itself. The bottleneck moved away from licensing outreach and into metadata integrity, ownership accuracy, split reconciliation, and unmatched royalty recovery. A song can now be streamed lawfully under the blanket framework, yet still fail to pay correctly if writer names, publisher shares, or work identifiers do not align across systems.

This is also where black box royalties became more visible as an operational issue rather than a hidden legal problem. When the MLC cannot confidently match usage to the correct work owner, royalties may remain unmatched until ownership data is corrected or the statutory holding period expires.

In practice, Title I modernized mechanical licensing by replacing an outdated permission workflow with a data-driven reporting system. For publishers and administrators, the law made catalog maintenance, split documentation, and rights data governance central to revenue collection in the streaming economy.

Title II: The CLASSICS Act

Title II, known as the CLASSICS Act or the Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society Act, addressed one of the longest-standing gaps in U.S. copyright law: the treatment of pre-1972 sound recordings.

Before the MMA, sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972 were generally protected under a patchwork of state laws rather than a unified federal copyright framework. This created significant inconsistency in how older master recordings were licensed, enforced, and monetized, especially as digital services made legacy catalogs widely accessible again.

The issue became more urgent as streaming platforms expanded access to classic recordings from artists such as Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and other legacy catalogs that continued generating significant digital usage decades after release. While these recordings remained commercially valuable, the legal remedies and royalty pathways available to rights holders varied depending on the state law framework that applied.

The CLASSICS Act changed this by extending federal remedies and digital royalty treatment to many eligible pre-1972 recordings. Rather than fully converting these works into standard post-1972 copyrights, the law created a federal protection regime specifically for digital audio transmissions and certain infringement remedies, while also setting phased expiration dates based on the age of the recording.

A major operational consequence of this title was its effect on digital performance royalties. Eligible legacy recordings could now generate statutory digital performance royalties through the same federal mechanisms used for later sound recordings, primarily through SoundExchange for non-interactive digital transmissions.

For catalog administrators, this change was especially important for older repertoires that had been commercially active but operationally difficult to monetize in a consistent way. Legacy ownership chains, estate control, label acquisitions, and incomplete historical metadata all became more important once these recordings entered clearer federal royalty systems.

Legacy catalogs had already become highly active on streaming platforms by the late 2010s, but the royalty treatment for many of these recordings remained legally inconsistent. By bringing eligible pre-1972 masters into a clearer federal framework for digital uses, Title II made it easier for estates, labels, and catalog administrators to route non-interactive digital royalties through modern systems such as SoundExchange. For older repertoires with complex ownership histories, this also increased the importance of chain-of-title records, estate documentation, and accurate historical metadata.

Title III: The AMP Act

Title III, the Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act, addressed a long-standing gap in how certain digital performance royalties reach the people involved in making a sound recording beyond the featured artist and label.

Before the AMP Act, producers, mixers, and sound engineers were often paid through private agreements, royalty points, or letters of direction signed by featured artists. While these arrangements were common industry practice, they depended heavily on contract compliance and manual coordination. If documentation was missing or outdated, studio contributors could be left out of royalty flows even when recordings continued generating digital performance income.

The AMP Act formalized a statutory process that allows eligible producers, mixers, and engineers to receive a share of SoundExchange royalties from non-interactive digital performances. This was particularly important for recordings played on digital radio services such as Pandora, SiriusXM, and webcasting platforms, where statutory sound recording performance royalties are collected and distributed at scale.

A key practical benefit of the AMP Act is that it reduced dependence on informal side agreements for newer claims. When a valid letter of direction is in place, SoundExchange can allocate the agreed share directly to the producer or engineer from the featured artist’s portion. For older recordings or cases where direct agreements are unavailable, the Act also created a petition pathway that allows eligible studio contributors to pursue royalty claims through a statutory process.

This title is narrower in scope than Titles I and II, but it had a meaningful effect on royalty transparency for recording-side participants whose contributions had historically been harder to monetize consistently.

For administrators handling sound recording income, the AMP Act increased the importance of contributor records, letters of direction, and legacy session documentation. Older projects, in particular, may require contract review or estate coordination to ensure that studio professionals attached to historically valuable recordings are properly reflected in current royalty systems.

How the MLC Fits Into the MMA

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is the administrative engine created under Title I of the Music Modernization Act. While the law established the blanket mechanical licensing framework, the MLC is the entity responsible for making that framework function in day-to-day royalty operations.

Its primary role is to administer blanket mechanical licenses for eligible digital music providers in the United States. Instead of each streaming service trying to locate and license every musical work individually, services now report usage and fund the centralized system operated by the MLC. This shifted the industry from permission-heavy title-by-title licensing into a reporting and matching model built for streaming-scale catalogs.

The MLC’s responsibilities include:

• collecting blanket license royalties from eligible DSPs
• receiving and processing usage reports
• matching reported usage to musical works and ownership shares
• distributing digital mechanical royalties to publishers, administrators, and self-administered songwriters
• maintaining the public musical works database
• holding and later distributing unmatched royalties under statutory rules

This is where the MMA became highly relevant to music administration workflows. The MLC can only match usage successfully when the underlying ownership data is accurate. Song titles, writer names, publisher details, IPI numbers, and split percentages all need to align with how works are registered across publisher systems, PROs, and internal catalogs.

For rights administrators, the MLC is not simply a royalty source. It is also a data validation environment. Missing writer splits, conflicting publisher claims, duplicate registrations, and inconsistent work identifiers often surface first through unmatched usage or claim disputes inside the MLC system.

The MLC became operational on January 1, 2021, and since then, it has become one of the most important U.S. systems for digital mechanical royalty recovery. For many catalogs, especially older works or independently administered repertoires, proactive MLC data maintenance has become a recurring revenue protection task rather than a one-time registration step.

How Royalties Flow Under the MMA

One of the most practical changes introduced by the Music Modernization Act is the way digital mechanical royalties now move through a centralized workflow. Instead of every eligible digital service attempting title-by-title licensing and payment, the MMA routes royalty processing through the MLC.

At a high level, the flow works like this:

1. A user streams or downloads a song on an eligible DSP

Services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other qualifying U.S. digital providers track usage at the recording level.

1. The DSP reports usage and pays blanket mechanical royalties to the MLC

The service submits usage reports, sound recording references, and royalty payments covering eligible mechanical uses under the blanket license.

1. The MLC matches the reported usage to the underlying musical work. This is the critical matching stage. Recording references, work titles, writer data, publisher claims, and ownership shares are used to connect the streamed recording to the correct composition.
2. Matched royalties are allocated to the correct rights holders. Once the work is matched, royalties are distributed to publishers, publishing administrators, and self-administered songwriters based on registered ownership splits.
3. Unmatched royalties are held under statutory timelines. If the MLC cannot confidently identify the work owner, the royalties remain unmatched until ownership data is corrected or the holding period expires.

This workflow made royalty distribution more scalable, but it also made data dependency much more visible. Payment delays are now less likely to come from licensing failures and more likely to come from ownership discrepancies, split conflicts, duplicate claims, or incomplete metadata.

For music administration teams, this changed the nature of royalty recovery. The work now centers on reconciling MLC unmatched reports, correcting split data, resolving duplicate registrations, and ensuring internal catalogs reflect the same ownership logic used by publishers, PROs, and DSP-facing systems.

A useful way to understand the MMA royalty flow is this: the law centralized the payment pathway, but the success of that pathway still depends on the quality of the ownership data entering it.

What Changed for Songwriters, Publishers, Labels, and DSPs

The Music Modernization Act changed the responsibilities of each stakeholder in the digital royalty chain, but not in the same way.

The most visible shift was improved access to U.S. digital mechanical royalties, which had previously been difficult to trace. Before the MMA, independent writers often had limited visibility into whether streaming usage had been properly licensed or whether royalties were sitting in unmatched pools. With the MLC’s centralized reporting environment, self-administered writers now have a direct pathway to register works, review claims, and recover previously unmatched income.

For publishers and publishing administrators, the biggest change was operational. The focus shifted from sending notices and chasing individual DSP licensing gaps to catalog governance: split validation, work registration, conflict resolution, and unmatched claim recovery.

A clear example of why this mattered is the 2017 Wixen Music Publishing lawsuit against Spotify, in which Wixen alleged that Spotify had streamed thousands of songs from its catalog without securing the necessary mechanical licenses. The catalog included works associated with artists such as Tom Petty, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, and Weezer, and the claim sought $1.6 billion in damages.

What made this case so significant is that it highlighted the exact breakdown the MMA was meant to address: DSPs operating at streaming scale without a reliable centralized ownership database for musical works. After the MMA, eligible services no longer needed to repeat that title-by-title licensing exercise. Instead, they report usage and fund the blanket licensing system through the MLC, while publishers and administrators focus on ensuring ownership data is accurate enough for matching and payout.

For DSPs, this changed the risk profile. Their exposure shifted away from repeated licensing outreach failures and toward reporting compliance, payment accuracy, and metadata quality.

Labels are less directly affected by Title I because it governs musical works rather than sound recordings. However, label-side recording metadata still plays an upstream role in helping connect streamed recordings to the correct compositions, especially in multi-version releases, remasters, and collaborations.

This redistribution of responsibility is one of the most practical outcomes of the MMA. The law did not remove stakeholder accountability, but it changed where the failure points now sit: less in licensing outreach, and far more in data governance and royalty matching.

Metadata, Matching, and Black Box Royalties

The Music Modernization Act solved the licensing bottleneck, but it did not eliminate the industry’s underlying data problem. In many ways, it made that problem easier to see.

Under the blanket licensing system, eligible DSPs can lawfully use musical works without securing individual mechanical licenses title by title. That part is centralized. Whether royalties actually reach the correct songwriter or publisher still depends on the ownership data attached to the reported usage.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s matching system compares DSP usage reports against registered musical work data. Successful matching depends on consistent work titles, writer names, publisher claims, ownership splits, IPI numbers, ISWC references where available, and other catalog identifiers. Even small inconsistencies, such as alternate spellings, outdated publisher names, or missing split percentages, can block a confident match.

That is where black box royalties begin to accumulate. The streams happened, the DSP paid under the blanket license, and the money is sitting in the system, but the ownership path is still unclear enough that payout cannot move forward.

A common example appears during catalog acquisitions. A publisher acquires part of an older repertoire, but legacy registrations still show the former administrator’s name in one system while updated split data appears elsewhere. The work may continue generating substantial U.S. streams, yet part of the royalties remains unmatched because the MLC is seeing overlapping or conflicting claims tied to the same composition.

Post-MMA administration work now regularly includes unmatched report reviews, split audits, duplicate registration cleanup, and chain-of-title corrections. For larger catalogs, these tasks are no longer occasional cleanup projects. They are part of ongoing royalty recovery and revenue protection.

The licensing side is now centralized, but payout accuracy still rises or falls on whether the ownership data entering the system can withstand matching at scale.

Modern Challenges in AI, Data Quality, and Global Licensing

The Music Modernization Act improved how U.S. digital mechanical royalties are licensed and distributed, but several modern pressure points continue to test how well the system performs in practice.

One of the most visible shifts comes from AI-assisted music creation and metadata generation. More recordings and compositions are now entering distribution systems with partially automated credits, stem-level collaborators, synthetic voice references, or AI-assisted lyric and melody workflows. The licensing framework can still function, but only if the underlying ownership and contributor data remain clear. When AI tools are used without documented human authorship roles, split confirmation, or consistent contributor naming, the matching burden increases downstream.

This becomes especially difficult in fast-release environments where songs move from creation to DSP delivery within hours. If publisher shares, writer identifiers, or administrator claims are still pending when the work begins generating streams, the blanket licensing system can accept the usage while the royalty side begins accumulating unresolved matches.

Global licensing adds another layer of complexity. The MMA governs U.S. digital mechanical licensing, but most commercially active catalogs operate internationally. A composition may be administered by one publisher in the United States, sub-published in Europe, and tied to separate society data across Latin America or Asia-Pacific territories. Even when U.S. MLC data is clean, cross-border ownership discrepancies can still create reporting inconsistencies when administrators reconcile global earnings.

A common example is a catalog with territory-specific split adjustments. The U.S. ownership share registered with the MLC may not mirror the publisher share structure used by a local sub-publisher in PRS, SACEM, GEMA, or APRA AMCOS environments. This does not necessarily break U.S. payouts, but it can complicate global royalty reconciliation and make catalog-level reporting appear inconsistent.

Data quality remains the thread running through all of these challenges. AI increases contributor complexity, rapid release cycles shorten verification windows, and global licensing introduces territory-based ownership variations. None of these issues undo the MMA, but they reinforce that centralized licensing only works as well as the ownership systems feeding into it.

For music administration teams, modern workflow discipline now extends beyond domestic registration. It includes contributor verification, AI disclosure where relevant, territory-aware ownership logic, and regular alignment between MLC data and international society records.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Music Modernization Act actually change? The law modernized how eligible U.S. digital services license and pay mechanical royalties for musical works. Its biggest practical changes include the blanket mechanical license, the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), federal treatment for many pre-1972 recordings under digital uses, and a statutory royalty pathway for certain producers and engineers.

Does the MMA replace copyright law? No. The MMA does not replace core copyright principles. It updates how specific rights, especially digital mechanical licensing and certain sound recording royalties, are administered within the existing U.S. copyright framework.

Who needs to pay attention to the MMA most? Songwriters, publishers, self-administered writers, publishing administrators, DSP compliance teams, producers, catalog managers, and legacy rights holders all need to understand how the MMA affects registration, royalty matching, and payout workflows.

Does the MMA affect sound recordings or only compositions? It affects both, but through different titles. Title I focuses on musical works and digital mechanical royalties, Title II addresses many pre-1972 sound recordings, and Title III affects producer-side royalty allocation for certain digital performance uses.

What happens when the MLC cannot match a work? The royalties remain unmatched and are held under statutory timelines while ownership data issues are reviewed. If unresolved, those royalties may later be distributed according to the MLC’s unmatched royalty rules.

Does the MMA solve global royalty problems too? Not directly. The law governs U.S. digital mechanical licensing, but because many catalogs operate internationally, U.S. MLC data often needs to stay aligned with foreign sub-publishing, PRO, and society registrations.

How does AI affect MMA administration? AI does not change the law itself, but it increases the complexity of contributor records, ownership splits, and metadata consistency. The more automated the creation workflow, the more important documented human authorship and contributor verification become for downstream royalty matching.

Key Takeaways

• The Music Modernization Act (MMA) was enacted in 2018 to modernize outdated U.S. music licensing systems that could no longer scale with interactive streaming and large digital catalogs.
• Title I introduced the blanket mechanical license for eligible DSPs and led to the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), fundamentally changing how U.S. digital mechanical royalties are licensed and paid.
• Title II, the CLASSICS Act, brought many pre-1972 sound recordings into a clearer federal framework for digital royalty treatment, improving monetization pathways for legacy catalogs and estates.
• Title III, the AMP Act, created a statutory pathway for eligible producers, mixers, and engineers to receive certain SoundExchange royalties from non-interactive digital performances.
• The MMA shifted the industry away from title-by-title mechanical licensing and into a centralized reporting, matching, and payout workflow built for streaming-scale usage.
• Accurate metadata now plays an even greater role in royalty collection. Writer names, publisher claims, ownership splits, IPI numbers, and chain-of-title records all directly affect whether royalties can be matched and paid.
• Black box royalties still occur when ownership data is incomplete, conflicting, or outdated, making ongoing catalog maintenance and unmatched claim recovery essential.
• Modern challenges such as AI-assisted creation, rapid release cycles, and global sub-publishing structures continue to increase the need for disciplined data governance across MLC and international systems.
• For songwriters, publishers, DSPs, and administrators, the MMA did not reduce responsibility. It changed where the risk now sits: less in licensing outreach and far more in data quality, reporting accuracy, and ownership verification. 

Practical Resource

Music Modernization Act Royalty Flow Worksheet (.xlsx)

A practical spreadsheet for songwriters, publishers, and catalog administrators who need to track royalty flow under the Music Modernization Act. It helps monitor MLC matching, identify unmatched royalty issues, reduce black box revenue risk, and organize follow-up actions across active catalogs.

References

Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, H.R. 1551, 115th Cong. (2018).

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1551

U.S. Copyright Office. The Music Modernization Act.

https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/

U.S. Copyright Office. Classics Protection and Access Act.

https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/pre1972-soundrecordings/

U.S. Copyright Office. Allocation for Music Producers Act (FAQ).

https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/faq.html

The Mechanical Licensing Collective.

https://www.themlc.com/

The MLC Portal.

https://portal.themlc.com/

SoundExchange. The Music Modernization Act.

https://www.soundexchange.com/advocacy/music-modernization-act

National Music Publishers’ Association. Music Modernization Act overview.

https://www.nmpa.org/issues/music-modernization-act/

Pitchfork. Congress Is Making Headway on a Bill to Modernize How Musicians Are Paid.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/congress-is-making-headway-on-a-bill-to-modernize-how-musicians-are-paid/

Pitchfork. Spotify Sued for $1.6 Billion by Publishing Company Wixen Music.

https://pitchfork.com/news/spotify-sued-for-dollar16-billion-by-publishing-company/

Reuters. Spotify defeats U.S. licensing group’s lawsuit over royalties.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/spotify-defeats-us-licensing-groups-lawsuit-over-royalties-2025-01-29/