One typo and the MLC loses your writer
The MLC pays writers as parties: a name and an IPI number. A line with the name spelled wrong and no IPI is a different person to the system. Everyone else on the registration is paid. That share sits.
What a registration actually says
Open any work in the MLC’s public database and you see the writers as the registrant typed them. For Juicy J’s “Go To Sleep” one registration carries the writer line JORDON HOUSTON, no IPI. His legal name is Jordan Houston. The MLC doesn’t read it as a typo. It reads it as a writer it has no record of, with no IPI to pay through.
That is the whole problem. The MLC matches recordings to works and pays the parties on the work. A party is a name and an IPI. When the name is one letter off and the IPI is blank, the money for that share has nowhere to go. The other writers on the registration are paid in full. The misspelled one is not paid at all, and the registration looks complete.
How it happens
- Hand-typed registrations. A manager, a co-writer, or a label employee fills in a form from memory.
- Inherited data. Much of the MLC’s database came from the Harry Fox Agency. One self-published writer told the Copyright Office in 2024 that he had seen no effort to clean up the metadata it inherited, and that his own inquiries “go unanswered and are seldom resolved.”
- Pipelines that drop the IPI. A registration can travel from a distributor to a publisher to the MLC and lose the IPI on the way, so the name is all the MLC has, and the name has to be exact.
Ari Herstand found the same thing in his own catalog: a co-writer had registered their songs under his artist name instead of his songwriter name and IPI, and on some co-writes only 50% was being paid out because the other half had no one to collect it.
Why nobody notices
A registration with a misspelled line passes every check that counts rows. The work is registered. Recordings are matched. Royalties are flowing. They are flowing to everyone except the writer whose name is wrong, and the statement that would show the gap is the one that writer never gets.
A registration of your song where your writer’s line is spelled wrong and carries no IPI. The other writers on it are paid. Your writer’s share is unclaimed, or claimed by a publisher on the wrong name.
A request to the MLC to correct the writer’s name and IPI on that registration. The MLC’s portal doesn’t let a member change an existing writer’s name or IPI; it has to go to MLC support, with the song code, the line as it reads, and the line as it should read. Where the writer is missing from the registration altogether, a claim on the work and an added writer line with the share.
- The MLC public work search (JORDON HOUSTON on “Go To Sleep,” song code GV97FZ). https://portal.themlc.com/search
- Dennis Day, comment to the Copyright Office, COLC-2024-0002-0050. https://www.regulations.gov/comment/COLC-2024-0002-0050
- Ari Herstand, “Songwriters: here’s how to claim your MLC money,” Ari’s Take. https://aristake.com/songwriters-claim-mlc-money/