Music Streamers, Writers Boosted by Royalties Clearinghouse (1)

Eighteen months after the launch of a new clearinghouse for distributing royalties owed by US streaming services to songwriters, both streamers and music groups generally agree it’s working.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective, created by a 2018 law, offers streamers like Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., and Spotify a single place to send all of their usage data and songwriter royalties, rather than tracking down rightsholders themselves. And once the MLC matches the money to works, countless rightsholders have a single payment source for a handful of major streamers and dozens of smaller ones.

The result has been fewer missed ...