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- Hacker News
- Not really any indication that you are collecting data for your own usage. No source code at least?
On that note, would it really be hard to use my own deployment of your app to check against the datasources your deployment uses?
by orsorna - The code behind this is a whole AWS stack built as part of our larger infrastructure. It's not just a simple script, it's a full data pipeline. The MLC data is ~400GB of raw TSV data dropped on an FTP server every week, which we then process, index, make available internally for our tools. The Blackbox site is a frontend that leverages this infrastructure.
That being said, everything we use here, the MLC Bulk Data feed and the Spotify API are publicly available.
https://www.themlc.com/bulk-database-feed ($100 sign up fee and $25/mo)
by knaught - Apologies for the delay, we're back now!by knaught
- love this but yes needs some context. my folks signed up for this type of offering years back and reclaimed a few hundred bucksby buildinext
- Wow thanks for this! Right now it’s rate limited, could we pass you the metadata directly maybe? To not burn your ip with their serversby elias_t
- We just added more capacity, and are adding even more here in a bit.by knaught
- How can music be on steaming platforms if the owner who should collect this doesn't consent to it? If it's their label posting it, shouldn't the label be handling renumeration?
Or is this for music distributed by DistroKid, CDBaby etc. before 2018?
by codersfocus - You don't need permission for radio-style playback of songs (in the US). There's a mechanical license available and royalties go to a rights collective.
Playing specific songs on demand requires permission, IIRC.
by toast0 - Music is broken down into two copyrights: Masters and Publishing.
Masters is the recording themselves, made by recording artists, distributed by record labels and distributors (DistoKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, etc.)
Publishing is the "work" or the song... made by songwriters, and royalties are processed by Music Publishers and PROs (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC).
A good way to wrap your head around it is... I can record a cover of Katy Perry's Firework... I can distribute that master (and make money) to DSPs like Spotify etc... but I do not own the "song" Firework.
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) is the body that governs US digital streaming mechanical royalties, which is a right on the publishing side.
by knaught - Searched for a band/album for which I was a credited performer. The band has eight figures in views - enough to justify pursuing.
Got a 500 shown as an error message on your site, related to a failed connection to Spotify.
by slopdetector - Spotify is throttling us very hard right now. Check back tomorrow, you should most definitely look that artist up.by knaught
- This is really interesting. Thanks for doing this. Checked one of my favorite artists who I would think is a very minor player in all this, and who is pretty original (Keb' Mo'). If I am reading the results right, he has $7,059 – $16,345 at risk. Wow. I hope this is widely used by the artists to understand the situation. Again, great work imho (I know virtually nothing about the music industry).
- When the Music Modernization Act passed in 2018... all US digital streaming mechanical royalties we're just held until the MLC was operational in 2021. So this is money owed from 2018 through 2026, it adds up.by knaught
- FWIW - I put in an album I produced on Spotify. Rather than just returning results for that album, it returned some not related to the album by another artist with the same name. It's not worth pursuing based on the number of streams I have, just - this is exactly what I suspected would happen before running search, and it did. So it makes me skeptical of the accuracy in general. But I'm definitely in favor of this.by SoleilAbsolu
- Interesting, would you mind sharing the album? There might be some weirdness with album searching with our latest updates.by knaught
- Spotify is rate limited so its very difficult to check now. Happy you built it, hopefully we will be able to use it soon to check our catalog.by addajones
- Thanks for letting me know, I'm checking the logs now.by knaught
- I tried running an artist through who is a friend, with a few grand found. Will forward the link to her. Is this Spotify only? Thank you.by quickdeer
- Amazing! The only stream count we can find that is publicly available is Spotify, so we use it as a reference point in our calculation, and it's why we give a range. If they have heavy plays on a different streaming platform like Apple, we don't have a good way of finding that number.
The estimate range is our best guess for money specifically in the MLC, which is for US digital streaming mechanicals for all DSPs (Spotify, Apple, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon, etc.)
by knaught - A note: nowhere in your post or the site (except the footer) is the “MLC” acronym expanded. I certainly didn’t know what it was before now.by subract
- Excellent point, I'll fix that.by knaught
- Agree, this needs context. I thought this was like some sort of unclaimed government funds thing or something at first.by pimlottc
- Thanks for building this!
I was in a band active in the mid 2000s (think myspace era) and we never signed up for, or collected any of our publishing. Somehow, we still stream quite well so have been actively trying to connect the dots on this stuff over the past few months.
They do NOT make it easy, and if you want to collect internationally as a DIY artist, its basically impossible. Trying to navigate this is almost a full time job.
by kyasui