Most independent artists know that streaming pays two different royalties for the same play and could not tell you where the second one goes. The first is the recording royalty, paid to whoever owns the master. The second is the mechanical royalty, paid to whoever wrote the song, and in the United States since January 1, 2021 it has flowed through a single nonprofit called The Mechanical Licensing Collective. This piece explains how that system works by walking through one real catalog inside it: 47 works registered under the writer name DANIEL DAJAI STEWART-HANDY, all showing 100 percent of shares claimed, 19 of them missing an international work code. Every claim here can be checked in the MLC's public search without an account, and the method for doing that is included.
How the Second Royalty Came to Exist
The Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act was signed on October 11, 2018. Its first title, the Musical Works Modernization Act, replaced the old song-by-song compulsory license for mechanical reproductions with a blanket license covering every interactive streaming and download service in the country. In place of each service tracking down each songwriter, the law created one collective to receive the money, match it to works, and pay the people who own them. The U.S. Copyright Office designated The MLC as that collective on July 8, 2019, and the blanket license took effect on January 1, 2021.
The opening balance tells you how broken the old system was. In February 2021 the digital services transferred about 424.4 million dollars in accrued royalties they had been unable to match to a songwriter, along with the usage data behind them. That money existed because songs were streamed, the mechanical was owed, and nobody could find the writer. Unmatched money is the central problem the MLC exists to shrink, and the central reason registration matters.
In 2024 the Copyright Office completed its first five-year review of the collective and kept the MLC in place, with recommendations on matching and transparency.
What a Mechanical Is Worth
The rates are set by the Copyright Royalty Board, a panel of three judges, in five-year proceedings. The current period, Phonorecords IV, runs 2023 through 2027. For interactive streaming the headline rate is a percentage of the service's revenue: 15.1 percent in 2023, stepping up each year to 15.35 percent in 2027, with the pool then split between mechanical and performance royalties and divided across all plays. For physical product and permanent downloads the same proceeding raised the per-track rate to 12 cents (or 2.31 cents per minute of playing time for longer tracks) starting in 2023, the first increase since the rate was set at 9.1 cents in 2006.
In practice, a writer's mechanical per stream is a fraction of a cent and varies by service and month. The point is not the size of any single payment. It is that this royalty is owed on every interactive stream in the United States, accrues whether or not the writer has registered, and is only paid out if the writer can be matched. Unregistered writers are not losing a theoretical royalty. They are funding the unmatched pool.
The Case Study: 47 Works
The MLC's public work search at portal.themlc.com/search does not require a login. Searching by writer name for DAJAI returns 52 results, of which 47 are works credited to the writer DANIEL DAJAI STEWART-HANDY (searching the more common ordering, STEWART DANIEL, returns 492 unrelated hits, which is the first practical lesson: register and search under the exact legal rendering). Each of the 47 works displays Total Known Shares of 100 percent. That figure means every ownership share of the composition is claimed by an identified party, so no portion of its mechanicals sits in the unmatched pool. The publisher of record carries the MLC publisher number P741NI and the writer carries the IPI number 00773316238, the CISAC-administered Interested Parties Information identifier that follows a writer across every collection society in the world.
The recordings attached to the works render under two artist names, DAJ' and DAJAI STEWART, which is a second practical lesson: a work is a composition, and one composition can have many recordings attached. The work titled HEAVY has 8 recordings linked to it; STILL BACKIE has 15. Each of those recordings is a separate sound recording with its own identifier, all pointing back to the same 100-percent-claimed composition. A remaster, a live take and a sped-up version are three recordings and one work.
The Gap: 19 Works Without an ISWC
Nineteen of the 47 works carry no International Standard Musical Work Code: GO, THATS MY, NASTY GIRL / ON CAMERA, GATTI, BEATBOX, WE SHOULD, TAKE IT TO TRIAL, SUMMER LEAGUE, RARA, BIG SHIT, THROAT BABY, BLACC MERCEDES, THUNUNUH, TRIPLE S, BADDIES, H TO THE IZZO, and three more. The ISWC, defined by ISO 15707, is the composition's global identifier, the counterpart to the ISRC (ISO 3901) that identifies a recording. A work can be registered and fully claimed at the MLC without one, as these 19 are, but the code is what lets foreign societies, lyric services and other databases recognize the same composition without a title match. Title matching is fragile: a work called GO will collide with hundreds of other works called GO.
ISWCs are issued by a writer's performing rights organization when a work is registered there. The fix for all 19 is procedural, not musical: confirm each work is registered with the PRO, let the PRO assign the code, and make sure the MLC record is updated to carry it. None of that changes what the works earn today. It changes how reliably they will be matched in five years, in another country, on a service that does not exist yet.
One more entry is worth naming. GIVE ME CHIP REMIX appears in the MLC with three writers and no ISWC, which is the normal condition of a collaboration that was agreed in a studio and never papered. Collaborations are where splits get lost, because every co-writer's share has to be claimed for the work to reach 100 percent; this one did, and the missing code is the remaining loose end.
Why Registration, Not Talent, Decides Who Gets Paid
The MLC's design assumes writers will register. It does not go looking for them. When a service reports a play of a recording the collective cannot tie to a registered work, the royalty is held, and after a holding period it is distributed to the writers who did register, in proportion to their market share. The money is not lost to the industry. It is lost to the writer who did not file. That is what the 424.4 million dollar opening transfer was, and it is what every month's unmatched remainder still is.
So the three facts in this case study are the three things that actually matter. Registered: the works exist in the system. One hundred percent claimed: nothing from them leaks to the pool. ISWC coverage: 28 of 47 can be matched globally by code and 19 still depend on a title. The first two are done. The third is a to-do list.
Method: How to Check Any of This Yourself
Open portal.themlc.com/search. Decline the non-essential cookies. Set the criteria dropdown to Writer Name and type the name exactly as the writer is registered. Click the search button rather than an autocomplete suggestion, which clears the field. Raise the results-per-page control to 100 and read each MLC Song Code block: it shows the title, writers, publishers, Total Known Shares, and the ISWC where one exists. The same page can be searched by ISWC, IPI, ISRC, recording title or publisher number. What it cannot show is money: royalty balances, statements and payee details are only visible to the registered member after login, which is why public verification stops at registration and share percentages.
What This Means
For a working independent writer the sequence is fixed and unglamorous. Register every composition at your PRO and get the ISWC. Register the same compositions at the MLC under your exact legal name and claim 100 percent of the shares you own, with co-writers claiming theirs. Attach every recording, remaster and version to the work it belongs to. Then check the public search twice a year, because the catalog grows and so do the gaps. Forty-seven works at 100 percent is a good position. Nineteen missing codes is a weekend of paperwork. The difference between the two is the difference between a song that pays you in 2031 and one that pays somebody else.
Sources
- The Mechanical Licensing Collective, Public Work Search, https://portal.themlc.com/search (47 works under writer DANIEL DAJAI STEWART-HANDY; verified 2026-07-30 and re-checked 2026-11-05).
- Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, Public Law 115-264, signed October 11, 2018. U.S. Copyright Office summary: https://www.copyright.gov/music-modernization/
- U.S. Copyright Office, designation of The MLC as the mechanical licensing collective, July 8, 2019; license availability date January 1, 2021. https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/mma-designations/
- The MLC, "The MLC Receives Historical Unmatched Royalties Transfer" (approximately 424.4 million dollars), February 16, 2021. https://www.themlc.com/press
- Copyright Royalty Board, Determination of Rates and Terms for Making and Distributing Phonorecords (Phonorecords IV), 2023-2027: streaming headline rate 15.1 to 15.35 percent of revenue; physical and download rate 12 cents per track or 2.31 cents per minute. https://www.crb.gov/
- ISO 15707:2001, International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC); ISO 3901:2019, International Standard Recording Code (ISRC). https://www.iso.org/
- CISAC, Interested Parties Information (IPI) system overview. https://www.cisac.org/
- U.S. Copyright Office, periodic review of the mechanical licensing collective designation, 2024. https://www.copyright.gov/