Music Publishers Will Be Handed Millions of Dollars Next Year. Here’s Why
Categoria: Musica
The Mechanical Licensing Collective has just announced its first-ever market share distribution for all of the royalty money that never found its rightful owner.
Por Billboard | 08/10/2026
Starting in April, music publishing companies will be handed a total of roughly $7 million every month — and not for any of the business they’ve done. It’s the result of a process mandated by 2018’s Music Modernization Act (MMA), and the biggest publishers will stand to take home the most money. Here’s how this little-understood process will work. Since the beginning of the streaming era, hundreds of millions of dollars in songwriter royalties have been accrued from streaming services in the U.S. that — for one reason or another — have never found their rightful home. Often, it happens because independent songwriters drop music by themselves, and since this group has little industry guidance, they may not provide all the proper information required to receive their payments. Other times, it can be as simple as a clerical error by a well-known, well-represented musician. Related Artists Can Identify Unclaimed ‘Black Box’ Royalties Via New Platform From Stem Co-Founder Hilary Duff to Receive Outstanding Pop Tour of the Year Award at 2026 Billboard Live Music Summit Judge Rules Woman Accused of Shooting at Rihanna & A$AP Rocky's Home Mentally Fit to Stand Trial As time progressed, this pool, sometimes referred to as “black box money” or more officially as “unmatched” or “unclaimed” royalties, accumulated with nowhere for it to go. Despite efforts to find the owners, some of these talents were unreachable. In response to this growing issue, the Music Modernization Act (2018), one of the most monumental pieces of music legislation to become U.S. law in recent history, mandated a system for eventually getting rid of this stagnant pool and distributing it back into the music industry ecosystem. The MMA also set forth the guidelines for the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), a middleman between the streaming service and the songwriter or publisher that would collect this form of royalty. As stated by Congress, the MLC has to try to match the black box money with its rightful owners for at least three years. In cases where that can’t be done, the MLC has the authorization “to distribute the unclaimed royalties to copyright owners identified in the MLC records, based on the relative market shares of such copyright owners,” as the MMA states. Now, as the MLC announced last week, the organization is ready to begin its first-ever market share distribution. This will happen in a piecemeal fashion, month by month, starting in April, when publishers will receive their share of about $7 million — which is the current amount of black box money for the month of January 2021, the first month the MLC was in operation. (Note: the MLC will continue to try to match that money, so this figure may go down before April.) According to the MLC, this will continue with distributions on a monthly basis, with the amount of money each month expected to be “comparable” to the January 2021 figure. That means by the en