A blanket licence created a single place to register a song

What happened

The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act was signed into law as Public Law 115-264 on 11 October 2018. Title I of the Act replaced song-by-song mechanical licensing for interactive streaming with a blanket licence, and directed the US Copyright Office to designate a single organisation to administer it. The Copyright Office states it designated the Mechanical Licensing Collective for this role, and that songwriters and publishers were required to register with the MLC from the licence's effective date, 1 January 2021, to collect royalties under the new system.

What the documents say

The Copyright Office describes Title I as establishing 'a blanket licensing system for digital music providers to make and distribute digital phonorecord deliveries,' covering permanent downloads, limited downloads and interactive streams, narrower than every possible use of a composition. The MLC's own site states it 'administers blanket mechanical licenses for eligible streaming and download services in the United States, collecting royalties due under those licenses,' and that a songwriter or publisher must become a Member and register each song before royalties can be matched and paid; the MLC states it distributes to Members monthly. Neither document extends this blanket system to synchronisation, public performance, or non-interactive uses, licensed through separate mechanisms.

Why it matters for makers

The mechanism is registration, not automatic payment. The blanket licence removes the need for a streaming service to negotiate a mechanical licence with every publisher individually, but it does not remove the composer's own obligation to register the work; unregistered songs generate unmatched royalties the MLC holds rather than pays out. This applies whether the composition was written entirely by a human or includes a generated element: the MLC's registration is keyed to the composition and its claimed writers, not to how the underlying sound was produced. A track built around a generated instrumental with human-written lyrics still needs its composition registered by whoever is credited as the writer.

What to check before you use it

This is a registration checklist, not legal advice on authorship. Confirm the composition is registered as a Member work under accurate writer and publisher splits before a track goes to streaming services, since unmatched royalties are not paid out retroactively without a successful claim. Where a generative tool contributed to the composition, check that tool's own terms for what they say about who may claim authorship, since the MLC's registration reflects a claim the registrant makes, not an independent determination of who wrote what.

• Is every writer and publisher share on this composition registered and matched in the MLC's system before release?
• If part of the composition came from a generative tool, what does that tool's terms say about crediting or claiming authorship?
• Are unmatched historical royalties sitting unclaimed against an earlier release under a slightly different song title or spelling?

A blanket licence solved a negotiating problem between services and publishers at scale; it did not solve the much smaller but entirely individual problem of a songwriter remembering to register the song. That second step is still manual, and it still decides whether a mechanical royalty is ever paid.

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