How It Will Work
For upcoming market share distributions, The MLC will allocate the remaining unclaimed accrued blanket royalties on a pro rata, song-by-song basis for each DSP and offering originally reported to The MLC in a given month. Allocations will be based on The MLC’s actual distribution data, not estimates of market share. 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.
Once market share distributions begin in April 2027, we will include those additional royalties in our regular monthly royalty reporting. Members will see these amounts clearly identified in their monthly royalty statements, broken down by DSP and offering, just like we currently report blanket royalties. We will also include metrics for these additional royalties in the aggregate distribution summaries we provide in our Member newsletter, on our website, and in our Annual Reports.
The amount of remaining unmatched and unclaimed royalties from January 2021 that would be eligible to be included in our first monthly distribution in April 2027 is less than $7 million, and that remaining amount will likely be even lower (due to continued reprocessing) by the time we complete our first distribution. We expect the remaining amounts that are eligible to be distributed in subsequent months will be comparable. We will also continue to undertake additional matching efforts specifically focused on the remaining 2021 royalties before we begin distributing those remaining royalties.
To provide additional transparency ahead of those distributions, the Unclaimed Accrued Royalties Dashboard offers monthly visibility into the remaining unclaimed accrued royalties associated with 2021 usage, including total royalty pools reported, amounts distributed or in dispute, and the remaining unclaimed accrued royalties that may be eligible for future market share distributions. The dashboard also provides a detailed breakdown of these remaining unclaimed accrued royalties — including unmatched royalties, unclaimed royalties, and other related amounts — and offers visibility into projected monthly market share distributions over the next 12 months. View the Unclaimed Accrued Royalties Dashboard here.
What About Historical Royalties?
Once the process for distributions of remaining blanket royalties has been successfully launched, we will look to begin working on building and launching the process for distributing the remaining historical royalties. As a reminder, in 2021, 21 DSPs transferred to The MLC all of the historical royalties (for periods from 2007 through 2020) they had been unable to match and distribute despite their best efforts. The total transferred was approximately $397 million (at the final rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board). We have made great progress here as well: We have matched over $337 million (nearly 85 percent) of the historical royalties originally transferred to us to registered works in our database, and we have distributed nearly $239 million (over 60 percent) of these royalties to the Members who have claimed their shares of those works.
We will share additional details regarding our anticipated timing for the start of our distributions of the remaining historical royalties well ahead of their eventual start date. In the meantime, we will also continue our ongoing efforts to match and distribute the remaining historical royalties. To see the progress we’ve made so far distributing historical unmatched royalties, you can view our Historical Royalties Dashboard here.