Vinyl Mechanical Royalties 2026: The MLC Won't Pay

Last updated: August 2026

If you pressed vinyl this year, you owe mechanical royalties on every copy — and The MLC will not collect a penny of it for you. The MLC's blanket license covers digital uses only. Physical mechanicals on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes are licensed and paid directly between whoever manufactures the record and whoever owns the songs. The 2026 U.S. statutory rate is 13.1¢ per song per unit (or 2.52¢ per minute for songs over five minutes), up from 12.7¢ in 2025 (Copyright Royalty Board, December 2025). On a 12-track album, that's $1.57 in mechanicals owed on every single copy you press and distribute.

If you wrote all the songs and own the masters, you're paying yourself — but you still have to account for it, and it still changes your break-even math. If you cut a cover, used a co-writer, or worked with a producer who took publishing, you owe someone else real money and you probably have no paperwork proving you paid it. Vinyl crossed $1.04 billion in U.S. revenue in 2025 on 46.8 million units sold (RIAA, March 2026), and a growing share of that is indie artists selling direct. The licensing infrastructure has not kept up.

Here's exactly who owes what, who collects it, and what happens if you skip it.

Why doesn't The MLC collect mechanical royalties on vinyl?

Because Congress didn't give it that job. The Music Modernization Act of 2018 created The MLC to administer a blanket compulsory license for digital phonorecord deliveries — interactive streams and permanent downloads from services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon. Physical product was deliberately left outside that blanket.

The result is a two-track system that trips up nearly every self-releasing artist. Your Spotify mechanicals flow to The MLC automatically once your work is registered. Your vinyl mechanicals flow nowhere unless somebody issues a license and cuts a check. There is no central collective sweeping up physical mechanicals and matching them to songwriters.

This matters more every year. Vinyl grew 9.3% in 2025 to $1.04 billion, its 19th consecutive year of growth, while CD revenue fell 11.6% to $312.4 million (RIAA, March 2026). Bandcamp alone moved 1.6 million vinyl records, 800,000 CDs, and 250,000 cassettes in 2025. Every one of those units carried a mechanical obligation that no collective tracked.

When artists run a full catalog audit through RoyaltyCoPilot.ai, physical mechanicals are one of the most common blind spots — not because the money was stolen, but because it was never licensed or documented in the first place.

What is the physical mechanical royalty rate in 2026?

The Copyright Royalty Board set the 2026 rate at 13.1¢ per song per unit manufactured and distributed, or 2.52¢ per minute of playing time for songs running longer than five minutes — whichever is greater. You take the higher number, per song, per copy.

This rate comes from the Phonorecords IV proceeding, which covers 2023 through 2027 and replaced the 9.1¢ rate that had been frozen since 2006. Phonorecords IV built in annual cost-of-living adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index, which is why the number moves every January.

Source: Copyright Royalty Board, Phonorecords IV determination and subsequent CPI adjustments.

Run the math on a real release. A 10-song LP at 13.1¢ carries $1.31 per unit. A 300-copy indie pressing run therefore generates $393 in mechanical obligations before you've covered a single dollar of pressing, mastering, or artwork. If one of those songs is a seven-minute closer, that track alone costs 17.6¢ instead of 13.1¢.

Who actually owes the money on a vinyl pressing?

The obligation sits with whoever manufactures and distributes the phonorecord. In practice:

1. A label release. The label owes mechanicals to every publisher and songwriter on the record. If you signed a deal, check the controlled composition clause — labels routinely cap mechanicals at 75% of statutory and limit payment to 10 tracks per album, meaning a 14-track record gets paid like a 10-track record at three-quarters rate.
2. A self-release where you wrote everything alone. You owe yourself. The obligation is real but internal — you're both the label and the publisher. Document it anyway, because it affects your cost basis and your accounting.
3. A self-release with co-writers. You owe every co-writer's publisher their pro-rata share of 13.1¢ per song per unit. A 50/50 co-write on a 500-copy run means $32.75 owed to your co-writer's side on that track alone.
4. A self-release containing a cover. You owe the outside publisher the full statutory rate on that track, and you need a license before distribution.
5. A pressing plant or distributor. Neither one owes mechanicals. They will happily press and ship a record with zero licensing in place and hand you the liability.

That last point catches people. Pressing plants do not check your licensing. Distributors do not check your licensing. The obligation is yours and it attaches the moment product ships.

How do you license a cover song for vinyl in 2026?

Covers on physical product still run through the original Section 115 compulsory license process — the one that predates The MLC and still works exactly as it did in 1976. There are three steps and a hard deadline.

Step 1: Serve a Notice of Intention (NOI). You must serve the NOI on the copyright owner before distributing any copies, or no later than 30 days after manufacturing them and before distribution. The Copyright Office still accepts NOIs for non-digital phonorecords when the copyright owner can't be identified or located.

Step 2: Pay monthly and account monthly. Under the compulsory license you owe royalty payments and a Statement of Account by the 20th of each month following distribution, plus an annual statement certified by a CPA. That's genuinely burdensome for a 200-copy run, which is why most indie artists don't use the compulsory license directly.

Step 3: Or just buy a license instead. Services like Easy Song and Harry Fox's Songfile issue negotiated mechanical licenses for physical product on a flat per-unit basis. You declare your pressing quantity, pay the mechanicals up front, and skip the monthly accounting entirely. For a run under a few thousand units this is almost always the right call.

Miss all three and you are manufacturing infringing copies. Statutory damages for willful infringement reach $150,000 per work — a number wildly out of proportion to a $393 mechanical bill, which is exactly why this is worth twenty minutes of your time.

What's the difference between physical and digital mechanicals?

The asymmetry is the whole story. Digital mechanicals fail loudly — you can log into The MLC and see unmatched works sitting there. Physical mechanicals fail silently, because there's no dashboard showing you what you never licensed.

Do you get mechanical royalties on records you sell at shows?

Yes — and this is where the accounting gets genuinely confusing for working artists.

Every copy you sell off the merch table is a distributed phonorecord. The mechanical obligation attached when it was manufactured and shipped, regardless of where the sale happens. If you wrote everything yourself, the merch-table sale is clean: you keep the retail price and the mechanical is an internal transfer.

If you have co-writers or a producer with publishing points, they are owed on merch-table copies exactly as they are on retail copies. Most indie artists never account for this, and most co-writers never ask. That silence is fine right up until the record does well, someone hires a lawyer, and four years of undocumented sales become a negotiation.

Keep a simple ledger: units pressed, units sold, units given away as promos (promos distributed for free still trigger mechanicals under most licensing terms — check yours), and mechanicals owed per song. A spreadsheet is enough. A missing spreadsheet is not.

What about digital-only releases that later go to vinyl?

They generate two separate obligations, and this is where indie catalogs most often develop gaps.

Your 2023 digital single accrued digital mechanicals through The MLC. When you press that same song onto a 2026 compilation LP, a brand-new physical mechanical obligation is created for every unit. Registering with The MLC does not license the vinyl. Paying digital mechanicals does not cover the physical.

The reverse is also true and equally overlooked: pressing a limited vinyl run of an unreleased song does not register that work with The MLC. If that track later appears on streaming — even years later — it needs its own MLC registration or the digital mechanicals go unmatched into the black box.

This is precisely the kind of split-catalog gap RoyaltyCoPilot.ai is built to surface: works that exist in one royalty system but not the other, sitting quietly unpaid.

What happens if you never pay physical mechanicals?

Three realistic outcomes, in rough order of likelihood.

Nothing, for a long time. If you wrote everything and pressed 300 copies, no publisher is auditing you. The obligation exists on paper and never becomes a problem.

It surfaces in a deal. Publishing administrators, catalog buyers, and label partners run chain-of-title diligence. Unlicensed covers and undocumented co-writer mechanicals are exactly what that diligence finds. A clean catalog closes faster and prices higher — unresolved licensing gaps get carved out of the purchase price or escrowed.

A publisher comes calling. Rare for small runs, but real for anything that gains traction. Major publishers monitor Discogs and Bandcamp listings for unlicensed covers of their catalog. The remedy is usually a retroactive license plus penalty, not litigation — but the leverage is entirely theirs.

The practical takeaway: the cost of doing this right is roughly 1–2% of your pressing budget and one afternoon. The cost of doing it wrong compounds quietly for years.

Your vinyl mechanical checklist

Before you send files to the pressing plant:

1. List every track and its full writer splits. Names, percentages, publishers, IPI numbers where you have them.
2. Flag every song you didn't write 100% of. Those are the ones with outside obligations.
3. License any covers before distribution. Songfile or Easy Song for small runs; direct publisher negotiation for large ones.
4. Calculate total mechanicals owed. Track count × 13.1¢ (or the per-minute rate for long songs) × units pressed. Build it into your budget line, not your surprise column.
5. Write down what you'll pay co-writers and when. A one-page split confirmation beats a text thread.
6. Confirm the same works are registered with The MLC. Physical licensing and digital registration are separate jobs; do both.
7. Keep the paperwork with the project files. Future-you, or a future buyer, will need it.

Physical mechanicals are the rare royalty problem you can solve completely before it happens. Do the math at the pressing stage and it's a line item. Discover it three years later and it's a cleanup project.

Frequently asked questions

Does The MLC collect mechanical royalties on vinyl records? No. The MLC administers the blanket compulsory license for digital phonorecord deliveries only — streams and downloads. Physical mechanicals on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes are licensed directly between the manufacturer and the copyright owner, or through an agency like Harry Fox.

What is the mechanical royalty rate for vinyl in 2026? 13.1¢ per song per unit, or 2.52¢ per minute of playing time for songs longer than five minutes, whichever is greater. The rate rose from 12.7¢ in 2025 under the Phonorecords IV cost-of-living adjustment (Copyright Royalty Board, December 2025).

Do I owe mechanical royalties on my own songs if I self-release vinyl? Technically yes, but you owe them to yourself, since you're acting as both label and publisher. The obligation only becomes an outside payment when co-writers, producers with publishing, or outside publishers hold a share of the composition.

Do I need a license to put a cover song on my vinyl release? Yes. Physical covers require either a Section 115 compulsory license — served via Notice of Intention before distribution, with monthly accounting — or a negotiated per-unit license from a service like Songfile or Easy Song. Streaming licenses do not cover physical.

Do free promo copies trigger mechanical royalties? Usually yes. Most licenses define the obligation by units manufactured and distributed, not units sold. Some negotiated licenses carve out a limited promo allowance — read your specific license terms.

Does my distributor handle vinyl mechanicals for me? Almost never. Distributors move product; they don't clear compositions. A handful of full-service partners will handle it if you ask and pay for it, but the default assumption should be that licensing is entirely your responsibility.

How do controlled composition clauses affect vinyl mechanicals? On label deals, a controlled composition clause typically caps mechanicals at 75% of the statutory rate and limits payment to 10 songs per album. On a 14-track LP in 2026, that means roughly 98¢ per unit instead of $1.83 — a difference of about 46% of what statutory would pay.

Can I find out whether I'm missing physical mechanicals from an old release? Yes, but it takes reconstruction rather than a database lookup, since there's no central registry for physical mechanicals. Start with pressing invoices and sales records, cross-reference against your split sheets, and identify every track with an outside writer. A catalog audit through RoyaltyCoPilot.ai will surface the related digital gaps at the same time, since works missing from The MLC and works missing physical licenses tend to be the same works.

Rates cited reflect the Copyright Royalty Board's 2026 determination. Sales figures from the RIAA 2025 year-end report published March 2026. This article is educational and not legal advice — for a specific licensing situation, talk to a music attorney.