The US-based Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) has published its latest data, alongside its third annual membership meeting.

The organisation has now distributed more than $1.5bn of mechanical royalties to publishers and songwriters. That’s up from more than $800m this time last year.

The $1.5bn total breaks down into more than $1.3bn of blanket royalties, and more than $160m in royalties processed by the MLC but paid by streaming services.

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Other new stats: the MLC now has more than 32,000 members, with more than 9,000 of them having signed up during 2023. Its public database now includes more than 33m works (songs/compositions) with more than 3m having been added this year so far.

The organisation also says that its ‘match rate’ for royalties processed is now 90%.

“We have effectively illuminated the black box by empowering our members with several tools that enable them to take actions intended to eliminate the black box,” said CEO Kris Ahrend.

[We wondered whether that should have read ‘eliminated’ rather than ‘illuminated’, but that’s the quote from the announcement. And black boxes do need light shone on them, so it could be right.]

Ahrend was the guest on the latest episode of our Music Ally Focus podcast: you can listen to that episode here.