On August 22, 2025, the Artist Rights Institute, together with music publisher Abby North, filed joint comments with the U.S. Copyright Office as part of the agency’s ongoing five-year redesignation review of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). The comments memorialize an ex parte meeting with senior Copyright Office attorneys and stress that this redesignation process must not become a perfunctory exercise. Instead, it should serve as a meaningful opportunity to hold the MLC accountable for its statutory obligations.
The filing underscores that Congress deliberately gave the Copyright Office broad regulatory oversight because the MLC was established as an experiment under the Music Modernization Act. After five years, the evidence points to serious deficiencies: continuing metadata errors, lack of access to bulk matching tools for rightsholders, opaque governance decisions, and unresolved questions about audits and litigation. Most strikingly, the MLC’s unilateral investment of unmatched royalties in the securities markets—totaling more than $1.2 billion on the MLC’s latest tax return—raises concerns about statutory authority and fiduciary duties.
The joint comments argue that interest on unmatched royalties was intended by Congress as a penalty on licensees for failure to timely match and pay, not as a windfall for the MLC itself. By adopting an unauthorized investment policy, the MLC risks stepping outside its mandate, exposing its officers and directors to fiduciary liability.
To restore transparency and trust, the Institute and Ms. North propose clear regulatory reforms: conditional redesignation tied to performance benchmarks, publication of vendor match rates, real-time disclosure of governance actions, clarified metadata responsibilities, and monthly reporting of investment holdings. These reforms would align the U.S. system with international best practices and protect songwriters whose livelihoods depend on fair and accurate royalty distributions.
Save the Date! September 18 Artist Rights Roundtable in Washington produced by Artist Rights Institute/American University Kogod Business & Entertainment Program. Details at this link!
The MLC, Inc. has to disclose its “highest compensated” employees on its nonprofit Form 990 tax return for 2023. The Copyright Office was supposed to be reviewing public comments on whether the MLC, Inc. should be renewed for another five years or if the party is over. That review has been going on for a year now, maybe they forgot? The party is obviously still going strong.
As we reported in a prior post about George Johnson’s grass roots effort to ask the Copyright Office to review that status of the compulsory license which is the raison d’être for the existence of their Mechanical Licensing Collective, the US Copyright Office turned him down. The Office has refused to look into a study on the continued viability of the compulsory license in the United States as part of the five year review of their Mechanical Licensing Collective. The five year review is the perfect opportunity to consider whether the compulsory license itself is fit for purpose.
This is particularly true after the near-fiasco of the MLC’s testimony to the House IP Subcommittee which is well worth watching, particularly the Subcommittee’s “show me the money” questioning about what the MLC is doing with the hundreds of millions that the MLC is “investing”. The only reason the MLC has these hundreds of millions is because of the compulsory license. This requires an explanation that nobody seems interested in making to the songwriters like George Johnson.
It seems to us impossible to consider one without the other and we appreciate George Johnson taking the time to make that argument to the Copyright Office. In coming days we will have some additional thoughts about the continued viability of the compulsory and look forward to a robust debate on the topic. We may have to conduct that conversation outside of the Imperial City, but that’s OK. There are many international interests involved as well as motivated constituents all around this country.
Here is the Copyright Office rejection letter. There are a number of assumptions it makes, such as the negotiation of Title I of the MMA was a free and open process and not a star chamber for the insiders. We’ll get to these in coming days.
Dear George,
Thank you for your letter requesting a study concerning repealing the section 115 compulsory license. As you know, the section 115 license was previously explored by the Office and it was recently amended by Congress as part of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). As the changes made to the license through the MMA have been effective only for the past two and a half years, the Office believes that it would be premature at this time to engage in a new study of the section 115 license.
To briefly recap this history, in 2015, the Copyright Office issued its policy report “Copyright and the Music Marketplace,” which reviewed the then-current conditions affecting the U.S. music marketplace and made various suggestions for reform, including with respect to the section 115 license. The report was built on input we received from organizations and individuals, including yourself, who shared their insights and experiences in written comments and in roundtable discussions.
With respect to the section 115 license, the report observed that “[m]any parties have called for either the complete elimination or modernization of section 115, citing issues such as the administrative challenges of the license, the inaccuracy and slowness of the ratesetting process, and frustration with government-mandated rates.” Ultimately, however, the Office recommended modernizing, but not repealing, the section 115 license. While the Office was sympathetic to arguments in favor of repealing the license, it was also concerned that eliminating the license would cause extraordinary difficulties associated with negotiating individual licenses for the millions of musical works offered on digital music providers’ services.
Three years later, Congress updated the section 115 license as a part of the MMA—an Act that Senator Grassley referred to as “the product of long and hard negotiations and compromise.” One of the Act’s cornerstones was the new compulsory blanket section 115 license, which became available on January 1, 2021.
Although we do not intend to undertake a new study of the section 115 license at this time, we want to remind you that the Office welcomes input from stakeholders and members of the public to better inform our decision-making. I would like to thank you again for your letter and any additional views that you may wish to provide to the Office in the future.
Sincerely,
Suzy Wilson
General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights
MRA asks a good question. There's nearly half a billion in songwriter "black box" money sitting at the Music Licensing Collective. What do they have it invested in? Unlike foreign songwriter rights societies, the US MLC doesn't have to disclose this. https://t.co/z5Co2VSfv0
Well, another quarter is rolling around and the MLC is still sitting on 100s of millions of dollars of songwriter money as far as I can tell. Billboard says the MLC has “matched”–maybe different than “paid”–$200 million of the $427 million in black box that it was paid by the services in 2021. This doesn’t count the unmatched that the MLC has itself added to that sum. And Congress still haven’t required them to disclose their investment policy, returns on investment or much of anything else.
Compare the MLC to community banks. There are approximately 1,000 community banks with net assets between $250,00,000 to $500,000,000. There are approximately another 1,200 community banks with net assets between $100,000,000 to $250,000,000. It’s admittedly rough justice, but why should one entity holding hundreds of millions of other peoples’ money have virtually no disclosure requirements and be essentially unregulated while another is the opposite?
Remember that the MLC is supposed to pay interest “at the Federal, short-term rate” “for the benefit of copyright owners entitled to payment of such accrued royalties.” Note that the Federal short-term rate is today a lot higher than it was when the lobbyists wrote the Music Modernization Act, currently 4.21% or thereabouts. And through the power of compound interest, that’s a bunch of cash the MLC is supposed to come up with. I wonder where they’ll get it from. Wouldn’t you like to know?
Anyway, let’s talk about interest rates. The “risk free rate” is often thought of as the rate of interest paid on US government bonds. That interest rate is thought of as risk free because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States that you hear so much about these days. Want to know where you can find that full faith and credit? Look in the mirror.
When you ask around about what collective management organizations do with their “black box” monies while they are waiting to match money with songwriters or at least copyright owners, you often hear that the money is invested in very safe instruments, like U.S. treasury bonds. This might be particularly true of CMOs that are required to pay interest on black box because that interest has to come from somewhere.
But–and here it is–but, as we have learned from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and the number of federal government officials in the mumble tank about why these banks are failing and why they are getting bailed out by, you know, the full faith and credit of the United States, “risk free” seems to be a relative concept. When you buy US government bonds, there are a number of different maturity dates available to you, kind of like buying a certificate of deposit. A common maturity date is the 10-year bond and the two-year bond, both of which were recently down sharply.
But–there is a connection between the interest rate that the bond pays, the price of the bond, and the maturity date of that bond. When bond interest rates increase, the face price tends to decrease. So if you paid $100 for a bond with a interest rate of say .08% and that rate then increased to say 4.5%, the face price of that bond will no longer be $100, it will be less. If that increase happens fairly quickly, you can have difficulty finding a buyer. The good news is that when the Federal Reserve raises the interest rate, there is about as much news coverage of the event as it is theoretically possible to have, both before during and after the rate increase, not to mention the Federal Reserve chair testifying to Congress. It’s very public. Closely watched doesn’t really capture that level of attention.
When bond prices decline, holders only “realize” the loss or gain if they sell the bond unless the bond is marked to market so the firm has to disclose the amount of what the loss would be if they sold the bond. Hence the concept of “unrealized losses,” “maturity risk,” or “interest rate risk.” Some think that US banks currently have $620 billion in unrealized losses due to interest rate risk. And don’t forget, these are your betters. These are the smart people. These are the city fellers.
This interest rate risk issue is not limited to banks, however. It is also present anytime that an entity tasked with caring for other people’s money invests that money in treasury bonds, crypto, or whatever. Like the MLC. You don’t have to be Wall Street Bets to end up losing your shirt or something in this environment.
So the point is that the same problem of interest rate risk and unrealized losses could apply to CMOs, such as The MLC, Inc. because of their undisclosed “investment policy” of investing the $424 million of black box they were paid by the services. They don’t disclose what the investment policy is and they don’t disclose their holdings so we don’t really know what has happened, if anything. The money could be perfectly safe.
If you’ve received one of these emails from the MLC about having to recast their monthly statement inside of a single month, when you’re eying that $500,000,000 of supposedly unmatched money that’s sitting in the MLC, Inc.’s bank account (maybe?), or if you’re trying to figure out when they are launching the vastly overdue claiming portal, you’re probably wondering–who’s in the clown car today? Bozo or Pennywise?
But maybe they’re smarter than they look. Because all they have to do to distribute that $500,000,000 on a market share basis is keep you looking at the bright and shiny object while they run out the clock.
And if you’re waiting for the Copyright Office to save you because they have “oversight”, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. Here’s the reality–nobody is minding the store. There’s a difference between “oversight” and “overwatch.” In Washington, “oversight” means finding someone else to blame and from the very beginning it has been clear who the MLC intends to blame–you. Because you didn’t “play your part” or sufficiently “connect to collect”.
The Copyright Office has done a couple things while under the supervision of the current head lobbyist for Spotify. They’re good at studies, terrible at oversight, so let’s give credit where it’s due. But also realize that’s where it stops because they have about as much moxie as a starfish. (And if you think the NMPA is going to save you, take a look at the frozen mechanicals debacle and ask yourself if a rational person could really take that seriously.)
At the core of the MLC’s business model is the ability to match. Matching is kind of a “See Spot run” building block. If you can’t match, it’s very close to saying you can’t count. Because it depends on what the definition of “match” is.
So what is a match? Or as the Bard might say, how can I screw thee? Let me count the ways. The Copyright Office produced the Unclaimed Royalties Best Practices study partly on this very topic. Notice the difference between “best practices” and “rules.” “Best practices” is not the same as “rule”. If you violate a best practice, nothing happens to you, so therefore perfect for Washington. If you violate a rule, bad things happen to you. The connective tissue is enforcement. If you violate a rule at the Securities and Exchange Commission, you wear stripes. If you violate a rule at the Environmental Protection Agency, you will pay a fine, for sure. If you violate a rule at the MLC? There really aren’t any so it can’t happen. In other words, it’s just like the Harry Fox Agency.
But that’s what we have so let’s look at one passage in particular from the Best Practice Study because that’s the closest we have to a rule book.
The Office recommends that the MLC make all [matching] metrics publicly available, except to the extent it would cause confidential or business sensitive information to be improperly disclosed. [God forbid.] Specifically regarding match rates, the Office acknowledges the MLC’s point that “vendors can easily increase their claimed ‘match percentage’ by simply dropping the confidence level at which they call something a match.” For that reason, the Office recommends that the MLC provide appropriate context for its metrics, including information surrounding how it defines a match, relevant confidence levels, and how confidence levels are tuned. Additionally, so that they are clear and precise, and to avoid possible confusion, the Office recommends that all royalty figures be provided both with and without accrued interest.[How about a best practice of how they are practicing complying with best practices best?
The Office recommends that in addition to providing annual statistics in its annual report, the MLC also have a dedicated public webpage displaying all of these metrics in a clear, well-organized, user-friendly, and accessible manner. The webpage should be interactive and allow users to search, sort, and break down the data so it may be more easily reviewed and analyzed. The webpage should also have an export or download feature, including bulk exporting/downloading, to aid public consumption and dissemination. The Office recommends that the webpage be updated monthly after each batch of new reports of usage arrive and go through initial matching processes. All metrics should be retained and made available online indefinitely (though the MLC could distinguish between current and historic metrics in the future) so long-term trends can be assessed and to ensure the public and the Office have access to them in connection with the review of the MLC’s designation every five years. The MLC should also be very clear about how applicable metrics may change in response to DMP reporting adjustments and the reconciliation of any related royalty underpayments or overpayments permitted by the Office’s regulations. Relatedly, the Office also recommends that the MLC make publicly available relevant metrics about DMP reported usage that the MLC determines is not subject to blanket licenses (e.g., where it is subject to a voluntary license instead, public domain musical works, etc.), such that any related paid royalties have been credited or refunded back to the DMP.
What would also be nice is to tell you how much of your money they are holding and how you get it back. Maybe they could practice the best out of that.
There’s nothing particularly insightful about any of that, right? It’s the kind of thing that any songwriter giving the subject a moment or two of thought could have figured out at any point in the last 100 years. It’s also the kind of thing that you would have expected to have been built into the MLC’s system–which is essentially the HFA system–from the beginning.
It doesn’t matter what they say they aspire to do. Naturally they have to say they aspire to get it 100% correct–because otherwise that raises some interesting questions about intent, right?
Will they ever be called to account for their failures? Doubtful. The only business in the world where you can get the government to let you hold $500,000,000 of other people’s money and then keep it because paying it out was just too hard for you.
Do you think this mess is what Congress had in mind after they were fed a bunch of crap by the know-nothing lobbyists?
Our sister site Artist Rights Watch fielded a Mechanical Licensing Collective Awareness Questionnaire during January targeting songwriters attending our MLC webinar. (MLC Awareness Questionnaire 1/31/21 n=120.) The purpose of the questionnaire was to give the panelists some idea of the awareness level of attendees about the issues we intended to discussed based on early responses to the survey. You can read the analysis of the responses here, but I’m going to discuss them briefly.
Of the 120 people who responded, responses suggest that approximately 70% of respondents personally handled the business and administration of their song catalogs, 50% were self-administered, and 50% administered song catalogs of 100 songs or fewer. In other words, the majority of respondents were exactly the kind of self-administered songwriters or administrators we sought to connect with and who are eligible to stand for the MLC board seats devoted to self-administered songwriters if the right insiders nominate them . We are still analyzing the geographic data, but about 16% were from California zip codes with the rest distributed across Texas, Georgia and other fly-over states predictably not represented on the MLC’s board of directors.
The basic questions about the MLC awareness we were trying to better understand were whether respondents even knew what we were asking about, and if so, how did they know. This will help understand the success of the information efforts to date by the MLC, the DLC, and the Copyright Office. We also wanted to know if respondents felt that they knew enough about the MLC to advocate for themselves with the MLC as an effectiveness metric for other educational efforts to date.
An encouraging 63% of respondents had heard of the MLC, but 22% had not. Less encouraging was 6.67% who had both heard of the MLC and successfully registered and 4.17% who had heard of it but had not been able to register.
When asked how they had heard of the MLC, respondents were asked to respond to a list of potential sources, including “other”. The largest source of information was “news media” at 27.35% and the next largest was “other”, which included a variety of sources including The Trichordist, Artist Rights Watch and MTP.
However, given the other answers, the education efforts of the MLC (including HFA), the DLC and the Copyright Office did not seem to be making much penetration into these respondents, although the Copyright Office led the pack, sometimes by a lot. This is curious because it’s not really the Copyright Office’s job and they are not being paid millions to do it.
As a measurement of the cumulative effectiveness of the educational outreach by the MLC, DLC and Copyright Office, we asked whether respondents felt they could advocate for themselves with the MLC. 60.83% answered “no” or that they “could use some help.” This was surprising, and I would have preferred to see that number down in the single digits.
Of those who tried to register with the MLC, 15.38% of respondents successfully registered, 12.5% were told to use HFA, but 32% were “not sure” what they were told to do by the MLC. I think that it’s safe to explore whether the data indicate that the educational outreach has resulted in an abysmally low registration rate.
Prior to January 1, 2021, DSPs operating under a compulsory license were required by law to account to rightsholders on a monthly basis, within 20 days after the end of each month. Starting on January 1, 2021, DSPs operating under the new blanket license will have 45 days after the end of each month to send their usage reports and royalty payments to The MLC. The MLC will then take 30 days to perform its matching functions and calculate the royalties due to each of its Members. That means that The MLC will send out royalty payments and statements to Members roughly 75 days after the end of each monthly period. Because the total duration of the new distribution process will be longer than the old process, there will be a two month gap at the beginning of 2021 between the time rightsholders receive their last monthly statements and payments from DSPs under the old process and the time when they receive their first monthly statements and payments from The MLC under the new process.
12% of respondents said that they were paid monthly and 60% of respondents were paid quarterly or “other” than monthly or quarterly.
We will be studying the responses over the coming weeks, but I had a few thought on the responses and a couple recommendations.
I’m going to ask if ARW can field the same questionnaire periodically to see how responses vary over time. UPDATE: ARW will be fielding a new survey with a few additional questions, you can participate at this link.
It appears that of all the media the experts are using to get their messaging out, the one making the greatest penetration for mere awareness is news media. However, respondent’s lack of confidence in their ability to register with the MLC as well as the low level of successful registrations hasn’t yet supported a conclusion that the experts’ well-funded efforts are producing greater MLC registrations or a greater understanding of how to register, or, and most importantly, actual registrations.
There seems to be considerable confusion for whatever reason about someone else doing the registration for songwriters, be it administrator or publisher. Outside of the survey, we have anecdotal evidence that songwriters are finding that their songs are not registered with the MLC after having been assured they would be by their publishers. Because of the announced songwriter payment gap that the MLC anticipates in the first few months of its operations, songwriters may only find out they are not registered when their payments stop.
Recommendation: One technique I observed with a SoundExchange information session was that artists were able to bring their laptops to a seminar where they were literally walked through the SoundExchange registration process step by step after the informational Q&A session concluded. Even during COVID this could be accomplished using screen share.
By using this technique, the MLC could make sure that the end result of their webinars, etc., was that songwriters or publishers registered works and learned how to do so for the remainder of their catalog. Plus they knew who to call if they had any problems or further questions. This takes time, but the whole process takes time and you’re only fooling yourself if you think otherwise, to be blunt. I would say that it matters less how these people managed to waste two years in which they could have been doing this than it does to fix the problem right here, right now. Do not let them tell you that the need only arose on the License Availability Date of 1/1/21 because that is just a CYA lie.
Recommendation: The experts should make a focus of their messaging a very clear statement that if you don’t register you will not get paid. That is the harsh reality. By hiding that ball, they do everyone a disservice. Maybe an unregistered songwriter will eventually be able to claw their royalty back from the black box at some point in the future, but in the time of COVID, that claw back comes with a mortality rate.
Recommendation: No accrued but unpaid royalties for the first two or three years of the MLC’s operations should be able to be placed in the black box. Not that they wait to pay out black box for 3 years, but they cannot use any of this money for black box–ever. Like state unclaimed property offices, they hold the money forever. The reason is that there is a greater than 50% chance that the reason funds are unmatched is because of the MLC’s startup missteps, not anything the songwriter did.
We’ve all heard rumors about how much is in the “inception to date” black box at the digital music services. The main reason that nobody knows is another example of the dismal drafting of the Music Modernization Act.
Wouldn’t you think that if the class actions against Spotify gave the insiders the leverage to negotiate the MMA giveaway that they could at least have gotten an immediate accounting from the services for how much of the songwriters’ money they’ve been holding all these years? But no, it’s sleepy time in Washington yet again. From the Land of Frozen Mechanicals they bring you more Brinksmanship 101. The retroactive black box payment is due to be made by the services to the MLC and its data vendor, HFA–remembering that HFA was also the data vendor for at least some of the services that created the black box in the first place.
However, there is some activity at the Copyright Office now about how to get this money paid. It’s at the Copyright Office because while drafting the aircraft carrier revision to the Copyright Act (aka Title I of the Music Modernization Act), the hard parts were never drafted and were left to the Copyright Office to handle through regulations. Musicians–you’ve seen this before. This is the Washington version of “we’ll fix it in the mix.” So you do have feel sympathy for the Copyright Office in the situation when all the smart people leave them twisting in the breeze.
DLC also provided a rough estimate of accrued royalties that are available to be transferred to the MLC, based on a limited survey of a subset of DLC members at a particular point in time, and with the crucial caveat that the precise amounts are in flux as digital music providers continue to engage in robust matching efforts. Specifically, DLC estimated that several hundred million dollars were available to be transferred to the MLC as accrued royalties, even after accounting for the derecognition of accruals based on preexisting agreements containing releases to claims for accrued royalties.
DLC also explained that the accruals that were derecognized because copyright owners were paid and provided releases were a fraction of that amount—on the order of tens of millions of dollars.
So now we know at least that much. We know there are “several hundred million” dollars at issue in the black box and we generally know where the money is. We may know that DLC members hold the money. We also know that this money has not been identified, but we at least know enough to get the nose of the camel in the tent.
[One of the problems that The MLC will encounter is matching songs to transaction data from the “safe harbor services” using the blanket licenses and enjoying the reach back safe harbor giveaway in the Music Modernization Act. There are different ways to do this, but it appears that The MLC wants to gather sound recording metadata (like the ISRC unique identifiers) and then map the songs to the sound recordings based on sound recording information from the services. This is hardly an authoritative basis to determine sound recordings, but that appears to be what The MLC intends to do. SoundExchange is the authoritative source for this information and they’ve been assembling that data for many, many years. This except from SoundExchange’s comment to the Copyright Office sheds light on the issues. Again, you’ll rarely find any of the issues in these Copyright Office comments discussed in the trade press unless someone like The MLC issues a press release. It’s also worth noting that The MLC has merely stated that The MLC “agrees that the data in the public MLC musical works database is not owned by the MLC or its vendor.” First, “data” is not the same as a “database”. We want to find out if there is any difference between disclaiming ownership of individual data and claiming ownership of the database as a whole. But second, there’s no proof yet that The MLC’s current “data quality initiative” does not simply update the database of The MLC’s vendor, HFA.]
SoundExchange appreciates the inclusion in Section 210.31(h) of the Office’s proposed regulations the requirement that MLC Database include a “conspicuous” disclaimer that states that the database is not an authoritative source for sound recording information. It appears that the MLC has decided to populate the MLC Database with sound recording identifying information sourced from usage data provided by digital music providers (rather than authoritative sources such as rights owners). SoundExchange believes this decision will result in the MLC Database being chock-full of redundant records variously misidentifying a large number of sound recordings.
Nonetheless, SoundExchange also recognizes that the MLC needs to launch its business on a tight timetable, and that the Office has sought to mitigate the issue through other provisions such as the requirement to provide data provenance. However, the MLC’s decision makes it critically important the MLC’s disclaimer concerning sound recording information be clear and prominent, and perhaps linked to a more detailed explanation of the issue, because this design decision carries a significant risk of confusing the public, which needs to understand what the MLC Database is and what it is not….
[I]t is critical that the MLC Database be easily accessible to all other industry participants, so others can build on the MLC Database to create value-added resources for the industry. For example, while the MLC’s reluctance to include and organize its data around authoritative sound recording information may make sense given practical constraints, it represents a missed opportunity to develop a resource with authoritative linkages between sound recordings and musical works that would be of significantly greater value for participants in the ecosystem. Fortunately, the statutory requirement that the MLC make its data available to others provides an opportunity for third parties to fill that void. This kind of function depends on API access to the MLC Database.
[The Songwriters Guild of America and the Society of Composers & Lyricists filed a joint comment with the Copyright Office on proposed rules implementing the public database that The MLC, Inc. is charged with stewarding. They raise a host of issues, but also focus on the ownership issue raised by the Alliance of Recorded Music and the songwriter credit issue raised by Kerry Muzzey.]
Ownership of the Musical Works Database
As to the issue of “ownership” of the Musical Works Database, SGA and SCL were gratified by the USCO’s clear statement quoting the MMA that: [w]hile the mechanical licensing collective must ‘establish and maintain a database containing information relating to musical works,’ the statute and legislative history emphasize that the database is meant to benefit the music industry overall and is not ‘owned’ by the collective itself. Under the statute, if the Copyright Office designates a new entity to be the mechanical licensing collective, the Office must ‘adopt regulations to govern the transfer of licenses, funds, records, data, and administrative responsibilities from the existing mechanical licensing collective to the public, either for free or at marginal cost, pursuant to the MMA.’
Nevertheless, we feel compelled to repeat once again the admonitions voiced by attorney Christian Castle in his recent submission to the USCO concerning practical issues, problems and anomalies that have arisen even prior to the commencement date of MLC public operations concerning the construction of the Musical Works Database:
I believe that The MLC is encouraging songwriters to correct their song data in the HFA database and that no data from HFA has been transferred to The MLC as yet, and may never be. If The MLC is having data corrected and filled out in the HFA database, then the rules applicable to vendor access to the database may not apply because the Congress’s musical works database is not actually being created at The MLC, it’s being created at HFA. Time will tell if I am correct about this, but it does seem that if I am correct, then The MLC and HFA are working together to exploit an imagined loophole in Title I that violates Congressional intent and certainly the spirit of MMA. Respectfully, the Office should find out what is going on.3
SGA and SCL believe that these are important questions of fact that require answers to ensure that data ownership issues are as clearly defined as possible in advance of any conflicts that may arise. Clarifying that (i) all data and corrections made through HFA will be mirrored in the Musical Works Database in real time, and (ii) that being compelled to provide data to HFA under color of authority from Title I does not constitute a license to HFA for any other purpose, will be important steps forward.
As we have also previously stated, the contractual role and authority of HFA (or any other vendor) should be subject to transparent scrutiny by all interested parties, includingthe music creators whose works are the subject of all information that resides in the database. That includes examination of the contractual rights of the vendor in regard to the data flowing through its own systems and/or those of the MLC, the ancillary vendor use rights (if any) of such data during both the pendency and post-expiration/termination periods of such contract(s), and the clarity of rights ownership of data by the MLC and successor iterations of the MLC (including as regards the Musical Works Database). We respectfully call on the USCO to address more robustly these important issues of transparency and data ownership, and ignore unsupported assertions that transparency and scrutiny of vendor relationships will invite inefficiencies as opposed to clarity and competition.
Songwriter and Composer Names in the Public Musical Works Database
As the USCO is aware and has recognized, SGA and SCL have been consistently outspoken concerning the fact that out of all pertinent identifiers for musical compositions, the names of the music creators of a work are among the only constant and unique data points. In all but the rarest of circumstances, such information is never subject to change, and therefore one of the most important and reliable elements necessary for accurate identification and matching of works.
Moreover, the extension of proper credit to human creators as part of this crucially important Musical Works Database –rather than simply limiting identifiers to the names of corporate assignees of rights which are frequently subject to change and termination– is both appropriate and essential to the fulfillment of the ideals and underpinnings of the MMA set forth in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. As that section makes clear, copyright protections are first and foremost meant to serve the interests of the creators and the public, not the corporate entities that serve in an instrumental but secondary role as rights administrators.
We have therefore remained completely at a loss to understand why this crucial category of information was omitted from the MMA as a specifically required identifier (and why the music publishing community for some reason failed to support our efforts to correct that oversight), and are especially thankful that the USCO has put forth a proposed rule
that requires the MLC to include songwriter and composer information in the database. SGA and SCL continue to remain disquieted, however, with the additional qualifier added by the USCO concerning the standard to be applied by the MLC in seeking music creator data: “to the extent reasonably available to the collective.” Such a limited standard serves to diminish the requisite and explicit value of songwriter/composer identifying information.
We respectfully believe that music creator information should be more clearly defined as a mandatory data point required to be pursued for inclusion in the database by the MLC with vigor, and suggest once again that the rulemaking more specifically reflect the imperative nature of this duty. A more appropriate standard would be, in our view: “to the extent available to the collective through its best efforts to secure such data.” The avoidance of creating loopholes that may permit music publishers to omit music creator information from the data they voluntarily provide to the MLC is essential, and the independent community of songwriters and composers continues to seek the assistance of the USCO in this regard.
In respect to the foregoing, we desire to make clear that SGA and SCL also continue to support the rights of those music creators who may wish not to be publicly associated with certain musical works. That is and must continue to be right of any songwriter or composer. We therefore support the proposed rule put forth by the USCO that grants the MLC discretion to allow music creators the option of having songwriter/composer information listed anonymously or pseudonymously. We would, however, prefer that such a regulation be extended into a mandatory direction to the MLC to accept such direction from a music creator.
The Trichordist 
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