We checked 91 popular songs on The MLC

Why this matters

Every time a song is streamed in the US, it earns a mechanical royalty for the people who wrote it. Streaming services pay those royalties to The MLC (the Mechanical Licensing Collective), which then pays songwriters and publishers.

The MLC can only pay out the parts of a song that someone has claimed. If a writer's share isn't registered, or isn't matched to the right person, the royalties for that share are held until somebody claims it.

How we did it

1. We picked 33 well-known post-hardcore, swancore, math rock and emo bands, leaving out our own clients.
2. We took the top two or three tracks from a Spotify search for each band's most popular songs. That came to 91 songs.
3. We searched each title on The MLC's free public work search and only counted a work as the band's when one of its linked recordings was credited to that band.
4. For every match, we recorded the work's Total Known Shares: the percentage of the song that members have claimed.

What we found

68 of the 91 songs could be tied to a registered work. Of those, 22 showed less than 100% of shares claimed. Ten were under half, and two were registered with 0% claimed.

Some of the gaps were on songs with major publishers attached. A gap means part of the song hasn't been claimed by anyone yet.

Another 11 songs had no registered work we could tie to the band's recording, and 12 had titles so common that the public search couldn't confirm either way.

Check your own songs

1. Go to The MLC's public search. You don't need an account.
2. Make sure you're on the Work tab, type your song title and click Search.
3. Find the right version by checking the writer names and the recording artist listed under each result.
4. Look at Total Known Shares. 100% means every share has been claimed. Anything less means part of the song isn't claimed by anyone yet.
5. Check that every writer and publisher listed is correct. Wrong names or a publisher you no longer work with can send money to the wrong place.

What this data can't tell you

Total Known Shares reflects what members have claimed, not dollar amounts. A gap can come from an unaffiliated co-writer, a claim still being processed, or a share nobody is collecting. "No work found" means we couldn't tie a registered work to the band's recording by title, not that the song is definitely unregistered. This is a small sample and a snapshot from October 10, 2026.