Unclaimed songwriter royalties are handed, by statute, to the songs already paid.

Start with the table, because the table is the whole finding. In its periodic review of the collective’s designation — Docket No. 2024–1, 91 FR 33208, published 3 June 2026 — the Copyright Office reports match rates not as one number but as five, sorted by how much each musical work has earned since January 2021. The tiers are “greater than $5,000”, “between $1,000 and $5,000”, “between $500 and $1,000”, “between $100 and $500” and “under $100.” The top three are “each above 90%”; the highest is “over 99%”; the fourth is “approximately 83%”; the fifth is “63%.” Read as failure rather than success, that is 1% unmatched at the top and 37% unmatched at the bottom. The system is not uniformly imperfect. It is 37× worse at finding you when your song is small.

Now read what happens to the 37%. 17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)(H)(i) sets a holding period of “not less than 3 years after the date on which the funds were received by the mechanical licensing collective.” § 115(d)(3)(J)(i) then provides that “after the expiration of the prescribed holding period … the mechanical licensing collective shall distribute such accrued royalties,” and (J)(i)(II) fixes the basis: “based on data indicating the relative market shares of such copyright owners … as reflected in reports of usage provided by digital music providers for covered activities.” There is no residual claim, no escheat to the state, no second chance. The money that could not be matched to a small work is paid, pro rata, to works that were matched — which, by the Office’s own table, are overwhelmingly the large ones.

There is a clause that reads like a protection and functions as a redistribution. § 115(d)(3)(J)(iv) requires a copyright owner receiving such a distribution to pay or credit a share onward to its songwriters, notwithstanding any contrary agreement, and “in no case shall the payment or credit to an individual songwriter be less than 50 percent.” So half of every unmatched dollar does reach a songwriter. It reaches a different songwriter — one whose publisher already found their money. The statute moves half the pool from writers who were missed to writers who were not, and calls it a songwriter protection. (J)(iii) adds that public notice of a pending distribution must be given “not less than 90 days before the date on which the distribution is made.”

The schedule is now published rather than theoretical. The MLC’s market share page states that it “intends to begin market share distributions in April 2027,” starting with January 2021 usage — the first month digital services reported under the blanket licence — and that each distribution will use the database snapshot taken “on or around February 10, 2027” for the April run. It notes the holding period for 2021 usage “will span six years,” twice the legal minimum, and that the remaining January 2021 pool was “less than $7 million” as of the January 2026 distribution and “just over $6 million” as of September 2026. One usage month is released each month thereafter. Against $243,856,456.84 of unclaimed royalties that is 40.64 months, or 3.39 years, of six-million-dollar instalments — and the Office’s own note that the amount eligible for the first distribution is “less than $7 million” is the clearest evidence that the famous pool does not come out in a lump.

Who wants the matching to stop? The people who pay for it. § 115(d)(7)(A) provides that “the collective total costs shall be funded by … an administrative assessment, as such assessment is established by the Copyright Royalty Judges … to be paid by … digital music providers.” In the same proceeding, the Digital Licensee Coordinator and DiMA told the Office that for recordings with less than one dollar of accrued mechanical royalties “it is highly inefficient for MLC[] to expend substantial resources to match these works,” producing “marginal benefits to creators.” They are not wrong about the cost. They are also the parties whose assessment pays that cost, and the works they are describing are the 63% tier. Every work abandoned at the bottom of the table becomes a pro rata credit at the top of it.

Against that, the price of not being in the 37%. The MLC’s own page for self-administered songwriters says, in two separate sentences, “There is no cost to become a Member of The MLC” and “There is no cost to register a musical work with The MLC” — which follows directly from § 115(d)(7)(A), because the streaming services are already paying the collective’s entire operating cost. Songtrust’s published pricing page, read this morning, charges “a flat, one-time fee per songwriter” of $100 plus “an administration fee of 15% for performance royalties and 20% for non-performance” — non-performance being worldwide mechanicals, the exact royalty the MLC collects and pays for nothing. Over five years a writer earning more than $75 a year of US mechanicals pays Songtrust more than a $175 one-off would have cost. Over ten years the crossover is $37.50 a year.

Which is the route. The asset is not a licence, a bond or a catalogue: it is the 102 days before the snapshot, and the work is registering other people’s songs into a free system that is demonstrably bad at finding small ones. Price it as a flat fee, never as a share, and never take custody of a client’s money — the whole reason this is a $500 business and not a bonded one is that the songwriter stays the member and the MLC pays them directly. At $175 a catalogue, $5,000 a month after 2026 federal tax needs $78,037.88 of gross fees, 445.93 catalogues a year, 37.16 a month, 1.72 a working day. The $500 is repaid by catalogue number 2.95.