The Copyright Office's 2026 decision keeps the MLC running the U.S. blanket mechanical license

On June 3, 2026, the U.S. Copyright Office published a notice in the Federal Register continuing the designation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), the nonprofit that collects and pays out royalties under the blanket license digital music services in the United States use to reproduce and distribute songs. The notice, effective that day, also continued the designation of the Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC), which represents those services. It closed the first periodic review required by the Music Modernization Act, with the Office concluding that both designations “should be continued.”

What the MLC and the DLC do

The Music Modernization Act of 2018 created a statutory blanket license covering permanent downloads, limited downloads and interactive streams, and it ended the song-by-song notice process that services had used for those uses. The law directs the Register of Copyrights to designate one collective to run the license. The Register picked the MLC in July 2019, and it opened for business on the license availability date of January 1, 2021.

The collective's core jobs include matching recordings to the musical works they contain, keeping a free public database of who owns which songs, running the process by which owners claim their works and paying them correctly. Digital music providers pay its costs through an administrative assessment set by the Copyright Royalty Judges. By statute its board has 14 voting members, 10 representing music publishers and four professional songwriters, plus three nonvoting members.

The Register must revisit both designations every five years. The first review opened with a notice of inquiry on January 30, 2024, which set deadlines running from April 1 to July 29, 2024, for the two bodies' submissions, public comments and replies. The Office received over 60 comments and later met with the MLC, the DLC and members of the public.

The record the Office weighed

Most commenters backed the MLC, and the Office wrote that their criticisms did not change its conclusion “that the MLC has been a success.” To show it still had the support the law requires, the MLC filed 1,129 endorsements from its members. Most of the performance figures in the notice come from the MLC's own reports and filings.

The headline match rate compares royalties matched with royalties reported, and some commenters asked for a works-based measure, arguing it would show how self-published songwriters' works fare. At the Office's request, the MLC split its rate into tiers by what a work had earned since January 2021. Works that had earned more than $5,000 were matched at over 99%, and the top three tiers were all above 90%. For works between $100 and $500 the rate was about 83%, and for works under $100 it was 63%.

What the Office wants changed

The renewal came with five recommendations for the MLC. The Office encouraged it to keep improving its tools for registering and claiming works, and said it expects routine disclosure of match rates by royalty tier. It recommended new metrics to judge whether assessment money is used efficiently, particularly for education and outreach, and a bylaw change on how the board's songwriter representatives are selected, to widen songwriter participation. It also said it expects more transparency about the MLC's investment practices.

Investments drew many comments. Go to Eleven Entertainment, one of several commenters seeking more disclosure, wrote that it is “our money that they are investing.” The MLC reported over $153 million in interest income as of the end of October 2025, and the Office said its practice of holding interest as reserves is not covered by its policy statements and raises “important legal and policy questions.”

The DLC was renewed too, with its own list of points. The Office noted that over 50 digital music providers that have filed notices with the MLC are not DLC members, and said the coordinator should keep working to add members by its next review.

What applies now

Both designations have been continued since June 3, 2026, and the Office said that, because both were continued, its regulations did not need to change. By our reading, the recommendations are the Office's expectations, not new rules. A search of the Federal Register's records on November 13, 2026, shows no later Copyright Office notice on the two designations.

For songwriters and publishers, that means the same collective goes on collecting and distributing blanket license royalties from digital music services, through the same database and claiming process. The Office has since turned to another streaming issue: notices published in October and November 2026 concern music streaming fraud, the subject of our explainer on the inquiry.