Editor’s note: This is the second of two articles examining current royalty lawsuits. The first article looked at the SoundExchange lawsuit against SiriusXM and its potential effect on performance royalties paid for sound recordings. This installment turns to The Mechanical Licensing Collective’s lawsuit against Pandora and the mechanical royalties that may be owed to songwriters and music publishers.
Last week, we talked about the ongoing litigation between SoundExchange and SiriusXM and how it could affect performance royalties paid on sound recordings.
This week, we need to move over one lane and talk about songwriters and publishers – and a separate lawsuit between The Mechanical Licensing Collective and Pandora.
The first thing we need to clear up is that these are two different lawsuits involving two different copyrights. The SoundExchange case concerns royalties paid for the use of the actual recording. The MLC case concerns mechanical royalties on the underlying song – the words and music written by the songwriter and generally controlled by the songwriter, a music publisher, or some combination of the two.
It gets confusing because SiriusXM owns Pandora. People naturally hear those two names and assume that everything coming through a SiriusXM radio, the SiriusXM app, and Pandora is running through the same royalty system.
It’s not.
SiriusXM announced its agreement to acquire Pandora in September 2018 in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $3.5 billion. The transaction closed on February 1, 2019, making Pandora an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of SiriusXM. The two companies have continued to operate as distinct services under their own brands.
That distinction is especially important for bluegrass songwriters who know their songs have been played on SiriusXM’s Bluegrass Junction channel and may now be wondering whether they could benefit from this lawsuit.
The answer is possibly – but not because of those Bluegrass Junction spins alone.
Three ways to listen, three royalty lanes
Let’s say a recording of one of your songs is played on Bluegrass Junction.
One listener may hear that performance through a satellite radio in a car. Another may hear the live Bluegrass Junction feed through the SiriusXM app or website. A third person may hear the same recording on a personalized station within Pandora.
Those may sound like three versions of the same thing, but they aren’t treated the same for royalty purposes.
The satellite broadcast generates public-performance royalties for the musical composition, normally handled through organizations such as BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, or GMR. SiriusXM also pays a digital performance royalty for the recording itself. That sound-recording money is administered through SoundExchange and divided among the master owner, featured performers, and funds representing nonfeatured musicians and singers. It isn’t a mechanical royalty paid to the songwriter simply for having written the song.
Bluegrass Junction is also available live through the SiriusXM app. That’s the SiriusXM channel being delivered over the internet rather than through a satellite receiver, but it remains part of the SiriusXM service. Bluegrass Junction is found on Channel 77 and carries a “listen live” option through SiriusXM. The app stream has its own digital licensing and accounting, but it’s still SiriusXM – not Pandora – and it isn’t the service challenged in this lawsuit.
That should not be confused with the separate feature inside the SiriusXM app called Personalized Stations Powered by Pandora. Those stations use Pandora’s personalization technology and allow SiriusXM subscribers to build stations around particular songs or artists. SiriusXM itself describes them as a distinct feature within its service.
In plain English, hearing your song on Bluegrass Junction through the SiriusXM app doesn’t automatically mean it was also played on Pandora. It doesn’t create a second Pandora performance, and it doesn’t by itself place that play inside the lawsuit we are discussing.
Your song would need to have received actual usage on Pandora.
That’s where the MLC case comes in.
What the MLC says Pandora got wrong
The MLC filed its lawsuit against Pandora in federal court in Nashville on February 12, 2024. It alleges that Pandora has underreported and underpaid mechanical royalties on its free, advertising-supported service since the MLC’s blanket mechanical license took effect on January 1, 2021.
Traditional radio-style streaming has generally been treated differently from an on-demand service such as Spotify or Apple Music.
On a noninteractive service, listeners may choose a station, artist, or general style, but they don’t have complete control over the recording they will hear next. Interactive services allow listeners to choose particular recordings on demand, bringing the reproduction and distribution rights – and therefore mechanical royalties – into the picture.
Pandora describes its free service as personalized internet radio. It acknowledges that free listeners can temporarily unlock on-demand features through what it calls Premium Access, but says those sessions are separate interactive uses for which it already reports and pays mechanical royalties. Pandora argues that offering those temporary sessions doesn’t convert every ordinary radio-style stream on Pandora Free into an interactive stream.
The MLC argues that the line has already been crossed. Its position is that Pandora Free users have continuing access to on-demand listening, along with replay, skip, search, and extensive personalization features. Because that capability exists within the offering, the MLC says Pandora Free should be treated as an interactive service as a whole, with Pandora reporting all the applicable plays, revenue, and content costs used to calculate mechanical royalties.
Pandora’s answer, stripped of the legal language, is that the MLC is attempting to use one feature to reclassify its entire free-radio business.
That may sound like an argument over the meaning of one word.
There could be hundreds of millions of dollars riding on that word.
How much money could be involved?
The MLC hasn’t put a specific dollar amount on its claim. Its complaint asks for damages to be determined at trial, along with late fees, interest, legal costs, corrected historical reporting, and an order requiring Pandora to comply going forward.
Any estimate at this point is speculation. Let’s be honest about that.
Still, SiriusXM’s public filings give us enough information to get a reasonable idea of the scale.
From 2021 through 2025, Pandora reported approximately 52.6 billion advertising-supported listener hours. The company also reports annual advertising revenue per thousand listener hours, known as RPM. Multiplying each year’s listening hours by its reported RPM produces approximately $5.22 billion in on-platform Pandora advertising revenue during those five years. SiriusXM’s RPM calculation excludes AdsWizz and other off-platform advertising revenue, although its listener-hour numbers include some nonmusic programming. That calculation stops at December 31, 2025, and doesn’t include 2026 activity.
The mechanical royalty formula isn’t a simple fixed amount per stream. It begins by calculating an “all-in” publishing amount using the greater of a percentage of service revenue or a calculation based on what the service pays for sound-recording rights. Composition performance royalties already paid or accrued are then subtracted to determine the mechanical royalty pool.
Using only the revenue side of that formula, and assuming the RPM-derived advertising revenue roughly approximates the statutory service-provider revenue base, the annual percentages produce a gross all-in publishing figure of approximately $780 million from 2021 through 2025. That assumption matters because SiriusXM’s public filings don’t disclose the exact revenue base the court would use.
That’s not the damages estimate.
Performance royalties still have to be deducted. Pandora would receive credit for mechanical royalties it has already paid on activity it classified as interactive. Nonmusic listening, direct licenses, exclusions, and other allowable adjustments would have to be sorted out. The formula could also produce a different result if the sound-recording-cost calculation is greater than the revenue calculation.
What the $780 million figure tells us – nothing more – is that the dispute is large enough for unpaid mechanical royalties to reach well into the hundreds of millions if the MLC wins its broad argument.
A rough estimate – and that’s all it is – is that a broad MLC victory could put the additional unpaid mechanical royalties somewhere between $250 million and $500 million before late fees. A narrower decision covering only certain features or categories might produce tens of millions. A complete Pandora victory could produce no major new royalty pool at all.
Those aren’t numbers claimed by the MLC, and the public record doesn’t allow a true damages calculation. They are a working range based on Pandora’s reported listening, the RPM-derived advertising revenue, the statutory rates, and the deductions we know must come out before the mechanical royalty is determined.
Then there are the late fees.
Federal regulations impose a late fee of 1.5% per month, or the highest lawful rate if lower, beginning when a royalty payment was originally due and continuing until the MLC receives it. Applying that across underpayments allegedly dating back to 2021 could add a substantial amount, although the exact calculation would depend on the amount due for each month and how the court resolves the underlying dispute.
A catch-up payment – and potentially larger checks afterward
This needs to be made clear because there are really two possible pots of money.
The first is the backlog.
If the MLC wins and Pandora is required to correct its reports going back to January 2021, the MLC would likely receive corrected usage information and additional royalties for those historical periods. It would then match those uses to registered compositions and distribute the accrued money to the appropriate publishers, administrators, and self-administered songwriters.
For an individual songwriter, that could produce a catch-up payment covering several years. Whether it’s substantial would depend entirely on actual Pandora usage and ownership shares.
I wouldn’t expect it to arrive in one giant check. When the MLC has handled other retroactive royalty adjustments, it has sometimes distributed previously unpaid uses first and followed with adjustments to partially paid uses in a later monthly distribution. The Pandora money could therefore arrive as one large corrective payment or as a short series of catch-up distributions.
The second pot is the money going forward.
The MLC isn’t merely asking Pandora to pay for the past. It’s also asking the court to require complete reporting and payment in the future. SiriusXM has acknowledged in its own SEC filing that the MLC’s theory, if accepted, would require Pandora to have paid – and to continue paying – significantly higher royalties.
If the MLC wins and the ruling takes effect, a songwriter could see a noticeable catch-up payment first, followed by larger monthly mechanical royalty payments from Pandora activity in the future. Those ongoing increases would continue as long as the songs are being played, the ownership information is correct, and Pandora remains required to calculate royalties on the broader base of listening.
The catch-up payment may be the headline, but the larger monthly checks going forward could matter more over time.
What could one songwriter receive?
Suppose you have a dozen songs that have received Bluegrass Junction airplay over the years.
Those satellite spins don’t establish that you are owed money from this case. They may have generated performance royalties through your PRO, but the MLC lawsuit isn’t seeking new mechanical royalties on Bluegrass Junction broadcasts.
Those same recordings may have accumulated actual Pandora listening, however. If they did, and the MLC wins, you could receive additional mechanical royalties based on that Pandora usage.
How much would depend on the number of plays, your ownership percentage in each composition, the number of co-writers, whether you own or control the publisher share, and whether the recordings are properly matched to your songs in the MLC database.
For a dozen bluegrass songs with modest Pandora activity, a few hundred dollars strikes me as more plausible than several thousand. Several thousand is possible if one or more recordings received sustained Pandora listening over several years. But without actual play counts, that’s only a rough guestimate – not a number anyone can bank on. Bluegrass recordings can quietly collect plays through artist stations and personalized radio without the writer having any clear sense of the total.
A writer who controls both the writer and publisher interests may also receive more than someone whose publishing is owned or administered elsewhere. The MLC distributes matched royalties monthly to publishers, administrators, and self-administered songwriters according to the ownership information registered in its system.
There’s no equal division of a settlement among MLC members. The money will follow the Pandora usage.
What should songwriters do right now?
First, don’t wait for the lawsuit to be over. A court can decide that Pandora owes more money, but it can’t fix a bad song registration for you.
If you are self-administered, log into the MLC Portal and check every relevant song that has been recorded and released digitally. Make sure the title, writers, publisher information, ownership shares, and IPI or CAE numbers are correct. Then make sure the recordings are connected to the composition, including the artist name, record label, and ISRC when you have it. The MLC’s Claiming Tool can identify missing or unclaimed shares, and its Matching Tool can connect sound recordings to the correct song.
If a publisher or publishing administrator handles your mechanical royalties, don’t create a competing claim. Ask them to confirm that your songs and ownership shares are registered correctly and that the known recordings have been matched. I would also ask whether its statements show Pandora activity dating back to January 2021. A song being registered with BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, or GMR doesn’t automatically mean that the MLC data is complete. Those are separate systems collecting different royalties.
The MLC’s public materials don’t direct songwriters to file a separate claim form for this case. The practical job right now is to make sure the data is right and save copies of your detailed statements. If corrected Pandora reports and money eventually arrive, the payments will depend on matching those uses to the right compositions and ownership shares. The worst time to discover a missing share, an old publisher, or an unmatched recording is after the catch-up distributions have started.
Where the case stands
Both sides filed motions for summary judgment in February 2026, asking U.S. District Judge Eli J. Richardson to decide the central legal issues without a full liability trial. The original June 30 trial and June 22 pretrial conference were canceled on April 28 while those motions remain pending. No replacement trial date has been announced.
Pandora has also challenged the MLC’s constitutional authority to enforce the blanket license. The MLC says Pandora raised that issue too late and that the organization operates under sufficient federal supervision. The latest publicly available filing on that question was the MLC’s June 24 response. As of July 30, 2026, Richardson hasn’t ruled on the summary-judgment motions, and no replacement trial date has been announced.
There’s no deadline requiring him to rule by a particular date.
A realistic estimate – not a court schedule – is that a summary-judgment decision could arrive in late 2026 or early 2027. If liability or damages still require a trial, the district-court case could continue through 2027 and perhaps into 2028. An appeal to the Sixth Circuit could push final resolution into 2028 or 2029.
Nobody should be standing beside the mailbox waiting on a check.
But songwriters shouldn’t shrug this off, either.
A few hundred dollars matters to a bluegrass songwriter. A few thousand matters even more. If the MLC is right, this case is about relatively small underpayments multiplied across billions of listening hours, thousands upon thousands of songs, and what could amount to seven or eight years of disputed activity by the time the case is finally resolved.
For the individual writer, it could mean a meaningful catch-up payment and larger mechanical royalties afterward.
But the money won’t follow Bluegrass Junction airplay. It will follow actual Pandora usage, accurate ownership information, and correctly matched recordings.
That may not be as simple as saying SiriusXM owns Pandora, so every performance counts twice.
When it comes to royalties, simple is rarely how this business works.
Sources
• The MLC complaint against Pandora
• Sirius XM Holdings SEC filings and annual reports, 2021-2025
• Federal mechanical royalty and late-fee rules, 37 C.F.R. Part 385
• SiriusXM announcement completing its acquisition of Pandora
• Public docket summary for Mechanical Licensing Collective v. Pandora Media
• The MLC’s June 24 response on Pandora’s constitutional challenge
• The MLC overview of historical royalty distributions
• The MLC’s Member tools and songwriter registration guidance
