By Tami LaTrell, music business executive and music rights expert

A stream, download, broadcast, or licensed use does not automatically become money in your account.

Before royalties reach you, your music must be registered, identified, reported, matched, and connected to the correct owners.

That is the through-line behind several major developments affecting music rights holders: Spotify’s audiobook bundle dispute with The MLC, The MLC’s planned market-share distributions, and new industry efforts to label AI-generated and AI-assisted recordings.

Different stories. Same lesson.

Your catalog’s data affects your royalty outcome.

Diagnosis: What These Stories Reveal About Your Catalog

1. Spotify bundles can change the mechanical royalty calculation

News hook: The MLC’s dispute with Spotify continues over how Spotify’s music-and-audiobook offerings are classified and valued for mechanical royalty purposes. The litigation remains unsettled, so no final outcome should be assumed.

Here’s the plain-English issue: when a subscription includes both music and another service, the subscription may be treated as a bundle. That classification can change how much of the subscription revenue is counted as the music portion.

That matters because mechanical royalties are calculated from a revenue pool. If the amount assigned to music changes, the amount available for songwriter royalties and music publishing royalties can change too.

The debate is not only about whether a listener streamed your song. It is also about how the service classifies the offering, reports revenue, and applies the applicable royalty formula.

Your individual catalog cannot control a platform’s business model. But you can control whether your songs are properly registered with The MLC, whether your ownership shares are complete, and whether your metadata gives the system a reliable way to connect your work to the recording being reported.

A stream can be counted and still fail to reach the right owner.

That is the difference between usage and collection.

2. The MLC’s future distributions make catalog health more urgent

News hook: The MLC will begin its market-share distribution process for remaining unmatched and unclaimed 2021 blanket royalties in 2027, starting with the remaining January 2021 royalties and continuing one month at a time after that. The distributions are planned to be allocated pro rata by DSP and offering using actual distribution data. The key issue is not a January 2027 payout date. It is that once this process begins, each month’s remaining royalties move through a market-share framework tied to existing distribution data.

Across the first 12 months of 2021, $674.89M was reported and approximately $75.13M still has not been connected to its owners. That is roughly one out of every nine dollars.

Here is where that money is stuck: $37.13M unmatched means the system could not identify the song, while $38.00M unclaimed means the song was identified but one or more ownership shares were never claimed. There is also $1.63M in dispute.

The scale becomes even clearer at the monthly level. For the January 2021 usage period alone, $53.88M in royalty pools were reported, $47.47M has been distributed, and $6.30M could not be connected to its owners, split between $3.24M unmatched and $3.06M unclaimed.

And watch out: this covers only the first 12 months of 2021, which is the oldest and most heavily matched period. Later periods are still processing.

What does “unmatched” mean? The MLC has received a report connected to a sound recording but has not been able to connect that recording to a registered musical work.

What does “unclaimed” mean? The work has been matched, but one or more ownership shares have not been fully claimed.

Both problems are data problems.

The MLC’s planned market-share process does not mean every creator can wait for a general distribution and assume their catalog will be included. The planned allocation depends on existing distribution data. In practical terms, songs already connected to royalty activity are positioned differently from songs with missing registrations, incomplete splits, or unidentified recordings.

Unmatched money has a deadline.

This is exactly the kind of rights and data exposure The Mezzo Agency monitors, because once a period moves through distribution, unresolved ownership and matching issues can leave money out of reach.

Your catalog should not be a mystery when money is moving.

Royalty Education: Follow the Data From Recording to Payment

What is the difference between ISRC, ISWC, and IPI?

These identifiers are part of the plumbing of music royalty collection.

• ISRC: Identifies a specific sound recording, such as a particular master recording of a song.
• ISWC: Identifies the underlying musical work or composition.
• IPI: Identifies a songwriter, composer, publisher, or other interested party in rights-management systems.

Think of it this way:

The ISRC points to the recording.
The ISWC points to the song underneath the recording.
The IPI helps identify the people and entities connected to ownership.

When these identifiers are missing, duplicated, or disconnected, royalty systems have to guess. Sometimes they cannot match the usage at all.

PRO vs. The MLC vs. SoundExchange

These organizations and systems do different jobs. Registering with one does not automatically complete the others.

This is why a song can appear in a BMI or ASCAP account and still have missing MLC royalties. It is also why a sound recording can need separate SoundExchange registration even when the composition is registered with a PRO.

One registration does not equal complete royalty infrastructure.

You may need to manage the composition, the master recording, the ownership shares, the identifiers, and the reporting relationships separately.

What the AI labeling initiative means for your data

News hook: On July 10, 2026, a coalition including RIAA, IFPI, The Grammys, and SAG-AFTRA announced a voluntary track-labeling initiative distinguishing “AI-Generated” recordings from “AI-Assisted” recordings. On June 2, 2026, SoundExchange and IFPI announced a capability for automatic ISRC assignment for individual recordings, with duplicate checking through SoundExchange’s database.

The AI-labeling initiative applies to the sound recording itself. “AI-Generated” covers recordings where generative AI creates the entirety or primary portion of the creative elements, such as lead vocals, key instrumental performances, or an entire prompt-generated track. “AI-Assisted” covers recordings created substantially by humans where AI is used for some expressive elements.

The initiative does not currently cover every use of AI in lyrics, composition, music videos, or cover art.

The larger lesson is not that technology will organize your catalog for you. It is the opposite.

More metadata fields mean more responsibility for accurate metadata.

An automatic ISRC assignment capability can make obtaining a recording identifier easier. It does not remove the underlying risk of disconnected recording data, inconsistent identifiers, or reporting gaps across the systems tied to your catalog.

Automation can assign a code.

Disconnected data can still interrupt the royalty trail.

Catalog Infrastructure: What Clean Data Looks Like

A healthy catalog should allow you to answer basic questions without searching through old emails, hard drives, or incomplete spreadsheets.

For every song and recording, you should be able to identify:

1. The song title and alternate titles
2. Every songwriter, composer, producer, and publisher
3. Each person’s ownership percentage
4. The relevant PRO affiliations
5. The ISWC, when assigned
6. The ISRC for each sound recording
7. The IPI numbers connected to the rights owners
8. The release date, distributor, label, and UPC
9. Registration status with The MLC
10. SoundExchange registration status for eligible recordings
11. Known uses, licenses, streams, broadcasts, and royalty statements
12. Any disputes, missing claims, or unresolved split confirmations

This is the practical side of music metadata management and music rights management.

Metadata is not decoration. It is the information that tells royalty systems what the asset is, who owns it, and where payment should go.

Watch out for split problems

A split sheet is not the same as a complete registration.

You may have an agreement stating that four people share a song equally, but the work may still be missing one writer’s PRO information, one publisher’s IPI, or one party’s MLC claim.

That creates a gap between what your team believes and what the royalty system can verify.

If the split is unclear, payment can be delayed. If the split is incomplete, payment can be held.

That is exactly the kind of ownership issue The Mezzo Agency checks, because if split data does not align across systems, the royalty system may not be able to verify the ownership it needs to pay.

Watch out for duplicate recordings

A remix, edit, remaster, live version, clean version, instrumental, and original master may each require separate recording-level identification.

Do not assume that one ISRC should cover every version. Do not assume a new distributor entry is harmless if it creates a duplicate or conflicting recording record.

This is where catalog management becomes essential. The Mezzo Agency checks for duplicate or conflicting recording records because when versions, releases, and recording data are not aligned, matching, tracking, and payment can break down.

Solutions: Build a Catalog That Can Be Matched

A practical catalog review centers on three questions.

✅ What do you own?

This is where The Mezzo Agency checks whether every composition and recording connected to your work is accounted for, including older songs, unreleased songs, alternate versions, collaborations, production credits, and works registered by someone else.

✅ Where is it registered?

This is where The Mezzo Agency checks your PRO, The MLC, SoundExchange, distributor, publisher, label, and copyright records. Remember that music copyright registration protects your claim in a different way from royalty registration. Both matter, but they serve different purposes.

✅ Can the system match it?

This is where The Mezzo Agency checks identifiers, titles, writer names, ownership shares, and recording information against royalty statements and unmatched-use tools.

This is the foundation of a music catalog audit or music royalty audit. The Mezzo Agency checks for gaps such as:

• A song registered under a different title
• An incorrect or missing writer share
• A producer agreement that was never reflected in the data
• An ISRC connected to the wrong composition
• A composition registered with a PRO but not The MLC
• A recording eligible for SoundExchange royalties but never claimed
• A missing publisher or administrator connection
• Royalty statements that do not reflect known uses

Left unchecked, those gaps can affect how to collect music royalties, whether the money is connected to songwriter royalties, producer royalties, mechanical royalties, performance royalties, digital performance royalties, or music publishing royalties.

They can also affect future licensing decisions and music catalog valuation. A catalog is harder to evaluate when ownership, income history, identifiers, and registration status are unclear.

Your catalog data is not back-office busywork.

It is the evidence that connects your music to your money.

The Spotify dispute, The MLC’s planned distributions, and AI-related metadata initiatives all point to the same conclusion:

Missing data, incomplete ownership information, and disconnected recording records put royalty income at risk.

That is what makes catalog oversight so important.

Source Note

• The MLC: Market Share Distributions
• The MLC: Unclaimed Accrued Royalties Dashboard
• IFPI: Music Community Introduces New Labelling Program to Distinguish Generative AI in Sound Recordings
• SoundExchange and IFPI Announce New ISRC Auto-Assignment Capabilities
• Music Business Worldwide: MLC vs. Spotify Bundle Battle Intensifies
• The Mezzo Agency: Services
• The Mezzo Agency: Infrastructure Is No Longer Optional ; It’s the Business