Market Share Distributions

The Music Modernization Act requires The MLC to hold (and continue efforts to match and distribute) royalties for a minimum of three years. Following this statutory minimum holding period, The MLC must eventually distribute any remaining unclaimed accrued royalties — which include unmatched and unclaimed royalties — to rightsholders based on their “relative market shares.” This congressionally mandated process is what The MLC refers to as “market share distributions.”

The MLC intends to begin market share distributions in April 2027, starting with unclaimed accrued blanket royalties. We plan to distribute one month of remaining blanket royalties each month, starting with the remaining royalties from January 2021 (the first month that DSPs reported royalties to The MLC according to the blanket license we administer). This process is documented in our Policy for the Distribution of Unclaimed Royalties, which is available here.

The remaining royalties will be allocated on a pro rata, song-by-song basis for each DSP and offering, using The MLC’s actual distribution data, then distributed with interest calculated at the statutory rate. Every song or share of a song that earned monthly royalties (whether initially or via reprocessing) will receive its pro rata share of the remaining pool of unmatched and unclaimed royalties for that month.