There's money at The MLC with your name on it — and no one is going to email you about it.
Unmatched royalties are mechanical royalties that streaming platforms have already paid out, but The MLC couldn't route to any registered owner because the metadata didn't match. That money goes into a pool. If you've been releasing music to streaming for more than a year and you've never specifically checked for unmatched royalties, there's a real chance some of it belongs to you.
What "Unmatched" Actually Means
The Mechanical Licensing Collective collects mechanical royalties from platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube on behalf of songwriters and publishers. Every time a stream happens, the platform sends reporting data — track title, artist name, ISRC code, sometimes an ISWC — and The MLC tries to match that data to a registered work in their system.
If nothing matches cleanly, the royalty goes into the unmatched pool. It doesn't disappear. It sits there until someone files a valid claim, or until The MLC distributes unclaimed amounts to matched rights holders after the statutory holding period.
The most common reasons a royalty ends up unmatched:
- The song isn't registered in The MLC's portal at all
- The ISRC code the platform reported doesn't match what's registered at The MLC
- There's a metadata discrepancy — different title spelling, different artist name, different IPI number between systems
- Publishing splits aren't documented, so there's no clear owner to route payment to
This happens more than most independent artists realize. A lot of people register with ASCAP or BMI and assume they're covered. But PROs collect performance royalties — The MLC collects mechanical royalties from streaming and downloads. They're two completely different systems, and you need to register with both. Missing the MLC step means your mechanicals from streaming aren't being collected at all, regardless of how long your PRO account has been active.
Who Can Actually File a Claim
To claim unmatched royalties at The MLC, you need to be the publisher of record — or self-publisher — for the song. That covers:
- Songwriters who control their own publishing and haven't assigned those rights to a label or publisher
- Independent artists who self-publish through their own publishing entity
- Music publishers of any size, including sole-proprietor setups you created for yourself
If you've signed a publishing deal or work with a publishing administrator, that entity handles registration and claiming on your behalf. But if you own your publishing — which describes the majority of independent artists — you're the one responsible for setting this up. No one at The MLC is going to track you down and tell you money is waiting.
One thing that trips people up: you register and claim at The MLC as a publisher, not as a songwriter. If you own 100% of your publishing, that's straightforward. If you share publishing with co-writers, each party registers their share separately through their own publisher account.
How to Register and Claim Your Royalties
Step 1: Create a publisher account at portal.themlc.com
If you've never done this, start here. This is completely separate from your ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC account — a PRO registration doesn't carry over to The MLC. Registering with The MLC involves verification steps and takes a bit of time, so plan for it rather than trying to rush through in one sitting.
Step 2: Register your catalog
Once your account is active, register each song you want royalties for. You'll need:
- Song title (exactly as it appears on streaming platforms)
- All songwriter names and their percentage splits
- IPI numbers for every writer
- ISRC codes for each recording
- Your publisher name and publisher IPI number
The ISRC is where most people run into problems. If the ISRC your distributor tagged to the recording doesn't match what you enter at The MLC, your streams won't match and your royalties won't flow. Pull your ISRCs directly from your distributor and enter them exactly as issued.
Step 3: Search the unmatched pool
After registering, go to themlc.com/unmatched-royalties. You can search the public database by song title, artist name, or ISRC. If your songs show up in that search, that's money sitting in the pool waiting to be claimed.
Step 4: File a claim
Through your MLC portal, submit a claim for any work you identify as yours. You'll need documentation proving you own or control the rights — a co-writer agreement, a split sheet, PRO registration confirmation, copyright registration, or some combination. The MLC reviews claims and, once ownership is verified, releases the royalties to your account.
Why Claims Get Rejected or Delayed
The claim process works well when your documentation is clean. When it's not, things slow down significantly or stall out entirely.
The biggest issue: no written proof of ownership. If you can't show The MLC that you control the share you're claiming — especially on a co-written song — the claim gets held. This is one of the less obvious reasons split sheets matter beyond just your relationship with collaborators. Third parties like The MLC, SoundExchange, and collection societies need documentation before they'll release money to anyone, and a signed split sheet is often the most straightforward thing you can provide.
Other common problems that slow claims down:
- IPI numbers that differ between your PRO registration and what your distributor put in the metadata
- ISRCs that changed when an artist moved from one distributor to another, creating a mismatch in the system
- Works registered under slightly different titles across different platforms
- Missing co-writer or co-publisher information in the original registration
If two writers submit claims for the same song with conflicting split percentages, The MLC holds the royalties until the conflict is resolved. Getting your documentation clean before you file makes everything faster — and avoids the back-and-forth of having claims kicked back.
How Much Could Actually Be Waiting
Nobody can tell you the exact number without looking at your catalog. But at a macro level, the unmatched pool at The MLC has held tens of millions of dollars at various points since the organization launched in January 2021. That's real money the industry already paid out that hasn't found an owner yet.
At the individual artist level, the people most likely to find meaningful amounts in the pool are:
- Artists who started releasing music before The MLC launched and never set up an account afterward
- Artists who switched distributors and ended up with different ISRCs for the same tracks
- Artists who registered with ASCAP or BMI but never went through The MLC separately
- Artists whose publishing splits changed at some point after the initial registration
For someone who's been releasing for three to five years without ever touching their MLC setup, finding a few hundred dollars — sometimes significantly more — in unmatched royalties is not unusual. The only way to know is to actually check.
The MLC Is One Stop on a Longer Trail
Mechanical royalties from The MLC are one income stream. SoundExchange handles digital performance royalties from internet radio, satellite, and streaming radio — Pandora, SiriusXM, iHeart. Your PRO handles performance royalties from venues, broadcast, TV, and streaming. Your distributor may be sitting on neighboring rights income from international markets.
The same registration and metadata problems that create unmatched royalties at The MLC create the same kind of leakage at every one of these collection points. A mismatched ISRC doesn't just affect your MLC payouts — it creates gaps at SoundExchange too. Missing ownership documentation doesn't just slow down an MLC claim — it causes the same friction anywhere a third party needs to verify your rights before releasing money.
Understanding how digital royalties flow across these platforms is something most artists only partially have right. And the parts they're fuzzy on are usually where the money gets stuck.
If you have a real catalog and you've never done a systematic look at your registration across all these systems — PRO, MLC, SoundExchange, distributor — the unmatched royalty problem at The MLC is probably the visible edge of something larger. A catalog audit maps the full picture: every song, every registration, every gap, and what's actually claimable. If you're not sure whether your money is flowing correctly, that's the place to start.