Guides
CWR for The MLC
The MLC administers mechanical rights in United States. The Mechanical Licensing Collective, payer of US streaming mechanicals.
History
Created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018 and operational since January 2021, The MLC administers the blanket mechanical license for US audio streaming and runs the public database that matches usage to ownership — the answer to a decade of unmatched 'black box' streaming royalties.
CWR at The MLC
The MLC is the rare society that was CWR-native from birth: it accepted CWR bulk registrations from day one, alongside its own spreadsheet formats. One documented rule matters: a CWR registration must cover all mechanical usage types — partial coverage needs a conversation with The MLC first.
Publishers deliver CWR files to The MLC directly (as members, affiliates, or sub-publishers). Like nearly every CISAC society, The MLC works in the CWR 2.1 / 2.2 era — the versions in production use worldwide since the standard displaced the proprietary registration formats of the 1990s. Per-society delivery profiles do change, so confirm the current version and any local quirks before a first delivery.
To see how a songwriter's works are registered today, with every spelling of the name and every IPI name number grouped per writer, look them up on Songlinks, a songwriter lookup over public registration data, also from Kane Technology Group. Why registrations drift, and how to check a list of writers.
Related societies
Two free checks for your CWR file. Is the file correct? Every record, share and control total against the spec, each problem on its exact line. Do its writers match their registrations? Every writer cross-checked against public registration data, including works registered under another spelling or IPI. Nothing stored: check a file at cwrcheck.com.