(CelebrityAccess) – The Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) has appointed former Digital Data Exchange (DDEX) Chair Richard Thompson as Chief Information Officer.
In this new role, Thompson will be responsible for overseeing the development and launch of the MLC’s data platform to distribute royalties payable to songwriters and copyright owners under the directives of the Music Modernization Act (MMA).
MLC Board Chair Alisa Coleman said: “Creating a single platform capable of handling a blanket mechanical license that will pay royalties to all songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers is a monumental effort that has never before been undertaken in the United States. To help guide this initiative, the Board takes great pleasure in formally appointing Richard Thompson as CIO.
“Richard’s impressive experience in building the technology behind Kobalt, as well as his past role as chair of DDEX and his participation in the international music metadata standards group for nearly a decade, make him the ideal person to drive the development of the MLC’s platform.”
Technology company ConsenSys and mechanical licensing administrator Harry Fox Agency (HFA) will serve as the primary vendors responsible for managing the matching of digital uses to musical works, distributing mechanical royalties, and onboarding songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers and their catalogs to the database. Additionally, the MLC will work closely with the DDEX to design interface(s) to access the data that will be included in the public database.
The MLC’s new date platform and royalty processing system is expected to go live on January 1, 2021.
