Copyright Registration vs. The MLC - Mechanical Royalties

Heyyy Creatives 👋🏽,

Registration with the MLC is not the same as registration with the copyright office.

MLC registration is for the collection of mechanical royalties only. It does not establish copyright ownership. You want to register with them if you do not have a publishing administration company handling the collection of your songwriting royalties. If you do have a pub admin company there is no need to register with the MLC. Your pub admin company should be collecting your mechanical royalties.


Registration with the copyright office is necessary to ensure you have a registration certificate in hand at the time someone decides to infringe on your song. You can’t file a lawsuit without the certificate and you will not be able to claim statutory damages because registration was not done before the infringement.

Moral of the story: both are necessary but for different reasons. 🤓

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