Streaming Royalties · Newsdesk
The Mechanical Licensing Collective is preparing to begin market-share distributions of remaining unmatched and unclaimed blanket mechanical royalties in April 2027. For independent songwriters, the practical message is simple: if your catalog data is incomplete, mismatched or unclaimed, now is the time to fix it.
The MLC announced at its 2026 Annual Membership Meeting that it will begin the congressionally mandated process for distributing remaining unclaimed accrued royalties on a market-share basis. The process starts with royalties tied to January 2021 usage and then moves forward one usage month at a time.
That matters because these are royalties that have already entered the system but still have not reached the right owner. In some cases, The MLC has a recording but cannot confidently connect it to a registered musical work. In others, the song has been identified but an ownership share has not been claimed.
What “unmatched” and “unclaimed” actually mean
An unmatched royalty generally means the usage has not yet been connected to the correct musical work in The MLC database. An unclaimed royalty means the work has been identified, but one or more ownership shares have not been claimed by a member.
The MLC is required under the Music Modernization Act to keep trying to match and distribute these royalties for at least three years before any remaining money can move through the statutory market-share process. For January 2021 usage, The MLC says it will have spent more than six years trying to match and pay the money before the first market-share distribution takes place.
There is still real money sitting in the system
The MLC’s current dashboard shows a January 2021 royalty pool of about $53.88 million. Roughly $47.47 million has been distributed, while approximately $3.24 million remains unmatched and another $3.06 million remains unclaimed. Together, that is about $6.3 million still unresolved for that single usage month.
Across all twelve months of 2021, The MLC currently shows about $75.13 million in remaining unmatched and unclaimed accrued royalties. Those numbers can continue to fall as registrations improve and older usage is reprocessed.
What changes in April 2027
The MLC plans to include the remaining eligible January 2021 royalties in its April 2027 royalty distribution. It will then move through the rest of 2021 one usage month at a time.
The remaining pool will not simply be divided among the biggest publishers in one lump. The MLC says it will calculate distributions separately by digital service provider and offering, using actual song-level distribution data. Songs that already earned royalties from a particular service and offering during the relevant month can receive a pro-rata share of the remaining pool.
That is why the period before the database cutoff matters. The MLC says the April 2027 distribution is expected to rely on a database snapshot taken on or around February 10, 2027. Rightsholders who believe they may be owed royalties from January 2021 are being encouraged to register works, claim shares and submit proposed matches well in advance.
What independent songwriters should do now
- Confirm every composition is registered. A released recording and a registered composition are not the same thing.
- Check songwriter and publisher ownership shares. Missing or conflicting splits can hold money up.
- Search The MLC database for your catalog. Look for duplicate works, missing registrations and unclaimed shares.
- Review older releases, not just new music. The first market-share cycle begins with 2021 usage.
- Submit proposed matches where appropriate. The MLC provides tools for connecting unmatched usage to registered works.
- Do not wait until February. Processing can take time, and data needs to be reflected before the relevant database snapshot.
The bigger lesson: metadata is money
Streaming has made global distribution relatively easy. Rights administration is still much harder.
An independent artist can upload a song today, see it appear on major platforms within days, and still have gaps in the publishing data that determines where mechanical royalties ultimately go. Titles, writer names, ownership splits, publisher information and identifiers all become part of the chain connecting a stream to a payment.
The MLC says it has now distributed more than $4.2 billion, has more than 100,000 members and holds data for more than 60 million works. Its overall current match rate is above 92 percent. Those numbers show how much of the system is working — but the remaining unmatched money also shows why artists cannot treat metadata as an administrative afterthought.
For independent songwriters, the approaching 2027 market-share distributions create a clear deadline. If money is sitting unmatched because a work was never registered correctly or an ownership share was never claimed, the safest time to investigate it is now.
Sources: The MLC Annual Membership Meeting announcement, The MLC Market Share guidance, Unclaimed Accrued Royalties dashboard; additional reporting by Music Business Worldwide. Featured image courtesy of The MLC.