In October of 2018, the music industry passed a momentous bill: the Music Modernization Act, or MMA. The sweeping law opened a brand-new process for streaming giants like Spotify to pay songwriters, and ordered the creation of a dedicated organization to track, collect, and pay those royalties to publishers and songwriters.
Just one question: who's gonna run this new organization?
Now, there are two groups vying to fulfill the obligations of the MMA-mandated Mechanical Licensing Collective, or MLC. In this edition of the Digital Music News Podcast, we talk to a board member for one of those contenders, the American Mechanical Licensing Collective, or AMLC.
But why is the AMLC getting pressured to drop out? We get into some of the thorny politics and heated arguments that are already characterizing the post-MMA building phase.
