Muso.AI Audit Tool Reveals Shocking Scale Unpaid MLC Royalties

Photo Credit: Muso.AI

Muso.AI’s new audit service is giving songwriters and publishers the ability to solve a nagging industry problem with MLC royalties. The amount of royalties recaptured could be staggering.

Digital Music News recently reported on the alarming scale of data discrepancies within the MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) database, including instances of duplicate works and royalty fraud. That’s bad news for those not getting paid, but the good news is that serious solutions are already arriving.

That includes a potentially game-changing fix by Muso.AI, a muscular music data and credits platform. Since its inception, Muso.AI has compiled an extensive music IP database by aggregating official metadata from labels and publishers, scraping public data from a broad range of charts, and ingesting user-contributed credits from artists and songwriters.

Now, Muso.AI is pointing its monster data gun at mismatched mechanicals in the MLC’s vast database, and teaming up with DMN to spread its solutions.

In a recent conversation with Music.AI cofounders Kyran de Keijzer and Aaron Kaufman, a rather depressing reality came to light. According to the duo, ‘83% of songwriters have an issue’ within the MLC – and for that matter, a broader number of royalty databases. Perhaps in that unfailingly upbeat tech ethos, however, the company has framed this as a problem ripe for a solution.

Muso.AI is now unveiling ‘Catalog Audit,’ which acts as a personal detective for investigating song metadata and royalty payments (or lack thereof).   And thanks to a sharing feature, publishers, admins, managers, writers, and even collaborators can join to help spread the awareness.

By comparing songwriting credits against the MLC database to identify discrepancies, a quick and comprehensive damage report is generated. In a preview with DMN, Muso.AI stressed that all creators can share discrepancies with collaborators, a structure that maximizes the chances of fixing issues.

Catalog Audit comes at the right time for Muso.AI, given the heft and breadth of their credits database. According to the company, Muso.AI’s database now includes tracks from over 8.5 million songwriters, with over 179 million songs and 716 million associated credits. The company has also verified more than 7 million user-submitted credits, while identifying more than 144 million tracks with issues in the MLC ecosystem.

Almost instantly, a creator can check Catalog Audit to see if song data is missing or recordings aren’t properly tied to a composition. A creator can download and send the Catalog Audit report to their publisher or administrator, or use it to register their works themselves.

Kaufman said that any pro or business subscriber on Muso.AI can access these audits as part of their existing subscription. However, subscribers can then share their results with anyone collaborating on a track. “We want to make sure this tool ripples throughout the industry, so everyone gets paid,” Kaufman said.

Accordingly, anyone involved in a track can view audit issues and share them with an unlimited number of collaborators. Once alerted, collaborators undergo a rigorous verification process and can then add any missing credits. Once clarified, the audit report enables actionable data to rectify attribution details and claim missing royalties.

Muso.AI was careful not to throw the MLC under the bus — but this is a sizable industry issue. “The MLC exposes their data and issues publicly, but it’s up to the rights holders to fix it,” Kaufman explained.

Muso.AI said its goal with Catalog Audit is to provide a ‘credit check’ for catalogs, a safety net that catches missing royalties. “The message is simple: don’t leave money on the table,” Kaufman told DMN. “Every unmatched recording or unregistered song is a royalty waiting to be claimed. With this new service, songwriters, artists, and publishers can take control of their data, ensuring that every song and every stream is accounted for.”

But how big of a problem are we talkin’ here?

In fairness, since its inception, the MLC has distributed over $3 billion in music royalties to songwriters and publishers, according to statistics shared by the organization. That’s a lot of royalties, though the flip side is what isn’t getting distributed.

The MLC, established under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, was created to centralize and match song data, then distribute mechanical royalties from digital services to songwriters and publishers. That turned out to be a monumental undertaking, and one that has generated ‘massive blind spots’ according to Muso.AI.

An analysis by the company revealed a shocking disconnect: more than half of the 50 million musical works in the MLC’s database aren’t linked to any recordings, and over 70% of the 224 million recordings submitted to the MLC are unmatched. This means that royalties generated from approximately 2.7 trillion streams remain unclaimed, sitting in a ‘black box’ because the system cannot connect a specific recording (ISRC) to its corresponding song and songwriter (ISWC).

Kaufman pointed to an even bigger culprit: a major division between the publishing and recording sides of a typical song and broader business. “The problem isn’t with a single entity, but with the siloed nature of the music industry itself,” Kaufman observed.

In many cases, the left hand simply isn’t talking to the right hand. Even worse, sometimes neither hand is present. 

By cross-checking its vast database against the MLC’s data, Muso.AI has identified two primary categories of problems with tracks: ‘Unmatched’ and ‘Unregistered.’ Unmatched tracks are those with royalties sitting unclaimed in the MLC’s database, while unregistered tracks aren’t in the database at all, despite garnering potentially billions of streams.

Muso.AI’s analysis shows that this issue spans decades, affecting everything from legacy tracks to modern hits. However, the most significant clusters of unregistered songs are from the last five to ten years, mainly due to an absolute explosion in DIY distribution and its relatively lax registration requirements.

However, this isn’t just a ‘long tail’ problem: Muso.AI also discovered thousands of songs with millions of streams, and even some with over a billion streams, that are either unmatched or unregistered. The reality is that even mainstream successes can fall into the black box, holding up potentially millions in royalties.

Beta-testing on Catalog Audit is already producing some game-changing fixes.

Enter Emilio Morales, Managing Director of Rimas Publishing, the powerhouse publisher behind major artists like Bad Bunny, La Paciencia, Eladio Carrión, Mora, and Cris Mj, who shared encouraging early results.

“We’ve been privileged to receive Muso.AI’s MLC Audit Report directly from their team, and what excites me most is that this level of transparency is now accessible to the entire publishing community,” Morales shared.

“Muso.AI had already changed the game with their groundbreaking music credits platform, and now this new development empowers us to proactively detect missing ISRCs and resolve ISRC-to-ISWC mismatches across our catalog—ensuring our songwriters’ royalties are never left to chance.”

Morales also pointed to real-time updates on issues, which help to prevent downstream royalty issues. “Muso.AI’s productization of this audit capability marks a turning point for the industry, setting a new standard of accountability and fairness in rights management.”

That sounds hopeful to creators, IP owners, and publishers who are braving mismatching and registration headaches. As one might expect, Muso.AI’s executive team is predicting a significant shift for the industry, with vast amounts of royalties being unlocked and flowing into the correct coffers.

That could change the tenor of a metadata and royalty crisis that has placed an asterisk on the streaming music explosion. Instead of battling AI slop and reams of unmanageable data, Muso.AI plans to shift the industry discussion towards rapid royalty recovery.

Appropriately, the team is also applying a catchy tagline to Catalog Audits: “Your catalog deserves it. Your royalties depend on it.”

Muso.AI provided the following steps for getting started with the Catalog Audit.

Whether you’re a songwriter checking your own catalog or a publisher managing an entire roster, Muso.AI makes auditing straightforward. The process guides you from claiming and verifying profiles, to seeing a preview of where issues exist, and finally unlocking a full, detailed report once you’re on the right plan.

For New & Free Users

1. 1. Go to the Muso.AI website
   2. Create your account (new users only).
   3. Navigate to the Audits page.
   4. Claim and verify your profile.
   5. See a sample of the issues in your catalog.
   6. Upgrade to a Pro plan (songwriters/artists) or Business plan (publishers) to unlock and download your full detailed report.

For Paid Users

1. 1. Go to the Muso.AI website or app
   2. Navigate to the Audits page.
   3. Claim and verify your profile (if you haven’t already).
   4. Download your full detailed report instantly.