There is a pile of mechanical royalties sitting at the MLC that nobody has claimed — money real songwriters earned, held because no one could work out who to send it to. It's called the black box, and until now the answer to "what happens to it?" was it waits. That changes in early 2027, when the MLC begins handing it out by market share, one usage month at a time, starting with January 2021. Money nobody claims stops being yours and gets split among everyone else. Claiming is free and the tools are public — this post explains what black box royalties are, what the 2027 clock actually means, and how to check whether any of it is yours.
What "black box" royalties actually are
A black box royalty is money a streaming service paid for the use of a song, where the person owed it couldn't be identified. The recording was matched — Spotify knew which track was streamed — but the composition behind it wasn't. No registered songwriter, no publisher, no split information. So the money goes into a holding account.
It happens for dull reasons, which is exactly why it happens so often:
- The song was never registered with the MLC, because nobody told the writer they had to.
- The registration exists but the metadata doesn't match the release — a different spelling, a missing writer, a featured artist in the title.
- Splits don't add to 100%, so the unallocated share sits unpaid.
- A co-writer registered their share and you never registered yours.
- The track is a cover, remix or re-recording and the underlying song was never linked to it.
None of these require anyone to behave badly. The money is simply waiting for a claim that never arrives.
How big is it?
Two separate pools, and people constantly mix them up.
| Pool | What it covers | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Historical | Streaming from 2007–2020, before the MLC's blanket licence | ~$427M transferred, adjusted to ~$397.3M as of September 2026 |
| Blanket (ongoing) | Usage from January 2021 onwards | Accrues monthly; January 2021's leftover is now under $7M |
The historical pool is the eye-catching number. The ongoing pool is the one with a schedule attached — and that schedule is the news.
The 2027 clock, precisely
The Music Modernization Act says unmatched royalties must be held for a minimum of three years while the MLC tries to find the owner. The MLC has chosen to hold 2021's money for six years — twice the legal minimum — but the end of that road arrives next year.
Here's the mechanism, from the MLC's own description:
- Early 2027, market share distributions begin.
- They start with January 2021 usage, then release one month of remaining royalties every month thereafter.
- The money is allocated pro rata for each DSP and offering, using the MLC's actual distribution data rather than estimates, plus interest at the statutory rate.
- It goes to publishers and self-administered songwriters — everyone whose songs did get matched that month shares out the money belonging to the people who didn't.
Read that last line again, because it's the whole point. Unclaimed money isn't destroyed — it's redistributed to everyone else. Independent creator groups have raised exactly this with Congress, arguing that a market-share split hands the largest catalogs the money that smaller, unregistered writers earned.
Two honest caveats we'd rather state than have you discover later. First, the first tranche is small: January 2021's remaining pot is under $7 million across the entire industry, and the MLC expects it to shrink further as matching continues. Second, this is a rolling monthly deadline, not a single cliff — miss January 2021 and February 2021 follows a month later. The urgency is real, but it's a slow tide, not a trapdoor.
How to claim black box royalties yourself
You do not need to pay anyone for this. The MLC's tools are free to members, and the steps are the same whether you have three songs or three hundred:
Register as a member of the MLC. It's free. If you're self-published, you register as both the writer and the publisher so nobody's share is left dangling.
Register every work you've written. , including covers, remixes and songs released under another artist's name. An unregistered song can never be matched, no matter how many streams it has.
Use the Claiming Tool. to find unclaimed shares of works that are already in the system — often a co-writer registered the song and your percentage is still sitting there.
Use the Matching Tool. to search unmatched uses by title and artist, then submit proposed matches for review. This is where historical money surfaces.
Fix the metadata that caused the mismatch. — ISRCs, ISWCs, writer names, and splits that total exactly 100% — or the same song will fall out of the system again next quarter.
Repeat for every PRO and society. , because the MLC only covers US mechanicals. Performance royalties, international collections and SoundExchange all have their own black boxes. Step six is where most artists stop, and it's where most of the money is.
Where a scan helps — and where it doesn't
Everything above is DIY-able. What's hard isn't the claiming, it's the finding: knowing which of your songs are unregistered, which have broken splits, which have covers you've never heard, and which societies are sitting on money in your name. That's a catalog-wide search problem, and doing it by hand means searching one title at a time across a dozen systems.
That's the job a free SongBounty scan does. It audits your catalog across the MLC, the PROs, SoundExchange, international societies and derivative versions of your songs, prices each finding in dollars, and backs it with evidence you can click — the held recording at the MLC, the registration that's missing a writer, the cover you didn't know existed. You get a ranked list of what to claim and where.
And the part that matters given who else is circling this money: we never take a percentage of what you recover, and we never take custody of your royalties. No commission, no 15–20% admin deal, no sales call. You claim; you keep 100%. Here's how it works.
FAQ
Royalties collected for the use of a song where the rightful owner couldn't be identified, so the money is held rather than paid. In the US, unmatched mechanical royalties sit with the MLC. They're usually caused by unregistered works, incomplete splits or metadata that doesn't match the release.
Register with the MLC for free, register all your works — including covers and songs you wrote for other artists — then use the Claiming Tool for unclaimed shares of existing registrations and the Matching Tool to search unmatched uses and propose matches. Then repeat the exercise at your PRO, SoundExchange and any foreign societies.
The historical pool covering 2007–2020 streaming was around $427 million when transferred, adjusted to roughly $397.3 million as of September 2026. Royalties from January 2021 onwards accrue separately; the leftover from January 2021 specifically is now under $7 million.
Starting in early 2027, the MLC distributes each month's remaining unmatched and unclaimed royalties on a pro rata basis — by DSP and offering, using actual distribution data plus statutory interest — to publishers and self-administered songwriters whose songs did earn that month. In practice, the money is shared among everyone who was matched.
If you've ever released music that was streamed in the US and you never registered the composition with the MLC, it's likely. It's also likely if you wrote with collaborators, if your songs have been covered, or if your credits and splits have ever been inconsistent across releases. Checking costs nothing.
No. We charge for the audit and take 0% of your royalties — no commission, no custody of your money, no ongoing claim on your catalog. You keep 100% of everything you recover.