FRAUD

Duplicate works, diverted royalties: how a “(B Mix)” steals a song

In September 2025, Digital Music News showed a registration called “24K Magic (B Mix)”, with one writer at 100%, collecting on more than a hundred recordings of Bruno Mars’ song. It had been doing so for over a year.

What happened

“24K Magic” has three writers. In the MLC’s database a second work appeared: “24K Magic (B Mix)”, one writer nobody had heard of, a 100% share, registered through a do-it-yourself publishing service. The MLC matched it to more than a hundred recordings of the real song, across a dozen stores. Every month, a slice of the song’s mechanical royalties went to the second registration.

Digital Music News reported it in September 2025. The MLC removed the registration after the reporter contacted it, confirmed royalties had been diverted, and called the amount “very small.” One performing rights organization had flagged the same registration as an unauthorized remix eighteen months earlier and stopped its own payments. The MLC had not.

The same reporter found the same writer on “Unforgettable (B Mix)” and “Havana (B Mix)”, still active, and a second writer listed at 100% on a dozen Lil Baby recordings that already had legitimate registrations. A tracker kept by an A&R platform listed more than 400 suspicious works.

Why it works

• Anyone can register. The MLC’s identity checks on a new registrant are light, and the self-service publishers that file for them are lighter.
• Nothing stops a second registration. A work is a title, some writers with shares, and the recordings it claims. Nothing in the system refuses a second work that claims recordings already matched to a first one, even with no writer in common.
• Nothing freezes the money. When two works claim the same recording, the MLC doesn’t hold the payment until someone sorts it out. It pays.
• Disputes are manual, and backward-looking money is hard to get. The MLC’s written position in March 2024 was that it “will not make adjustments for royalties that may have been paid for periods prior to the placement of royalties in suspense.” Money paid out before you dispute is money you are chasing, not money you are owed back automatically.

Who it hits

The famous song in the story got fixed because a reporter called. The dozen Lil Baby recordings, and the four hundred works on the tracker, are the real shape of it: songs with a few writers and no one watching the statements. For a song with one writer, a 100% duplicate is the whole income of the song.

The MLC also publishes lists of recordings it hasn’t matched. For an honest publisher that is a to-do list. For the people in this story it is a shopping list.