The MLC delivers monthly royalty statements from the Member Hub Portal as tab-separated (.tsv) files, in two official layouts: Royalty Detail (62 fields, one row per sound-recording transaction) and Work Summary (27 fields, aggregated per musical work) — both the 2022-10-10 layout versions. Drop either file here and get a clean Excel earnings tape, without the rename-to-.txt import dance.
The converter auto-detects both MLC layouts by their headers — Royalty Detail and Work Summary — and maps every field. Mix months, mix layouts, add your distributor statements to the same run.
Convert your statement now — freeThis page exists because "how do I open my MLC .tsv" is a genuinely common question — common enough that the MLC's own help blog walks members through Excel's text-import wizard. Windows does not associate .tsv with Excel, so people rename the file to .txt or .csv to force it open. That is where the damage starts: renamed to .csv, some locales parse on commas and dump every row into one column; and even a "successful" open applies Excel's General format, which strips leading zeros, rewrites 11-digit IPI and 16-digit ISNI identifiers into scientific notation (rounding away digits permanently if you save), and re-guesses the ISO dates. Large Royalty Detail files can also exceed Excel's 1,048,576-row limit, in which case Excel loads what fits and discards the rest. The converter avoids all of it: fields are read as the layout defines them — identifiers as text, dates as dates, amounts as numbers — and delivered as a proper .xlsx.
| # | Field | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 2–3 | DISTRIBUTION DESCRIPTION / DATE | Which monthly distribution this is (e.g. "February 2021") and its ISO date. |
| 8–9 | PAYEE MLC NUMBER / NAME | Who the money is payable to. |
| 20–21 | USAGE PERIOD START / END DATE | The period the DSP usage covers — the dates to report earnings under. |
| 23–24 | DSP NAME · CONSUMER OFFERING | The service and the specific tier, e.g. "Spotify Premium". |
| 26 | USE TYPE | Streaming, Download or Ringtone. |
| 27 | TERRITORY | Two-letter code — US, since the MLC administers the US blanket licence. |
| 29 | MLC SONG CODE | The MLC's work identifier, e.g. A12345. |
| 31–32 | ISWC · WORK PRIMARY TITLE | The musical work: standard identifier and registered title. |
| 34 | WORK WRITER LIST | Writers, pipe-separated in one field. |
| 37 | WORK PAYABLE % | Your payable share of the work, as a decimal — 0.5 means 50%. |
| 39–40 | ISRC · RECORDING TITLE | The specific sound recording the usage attaches to. |
| 43 | DURATION | ISO-8601 duration, e.g. PT3M32S — not seconds, not HH:MM:SS. |
| 52–53 | PROCESSING TYPE · CORRECTION INDICATOR | Regular, Reprocessing or Historical; R marks a reversal, C a correction. |
| 55 | NUMBER OF USAGES | Usage count for the row (a decimal in the layout). |
| 57 | EFFECTIVE ROYALTY RATE | The per-usage rate applied. |
| 59–61 | ROYALTY / LATE FEE / INTEREST AMOUNT | The royalty itself, plus any late fees and interest the DSP owed. |
| 62 | DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT | What was actually paid: royalty + late fees + interest. The column the earnings tape sums. |
The layout groups its fields into seven types. The converter maps all 62 — nothing is dropped in normalization.
| Field type | Fields (layout order) |
|---|---|
| Distribution (1–3) | DISTRIBUTION IDENTIFIER · DISTRIBUTION DESCRIPTION · DISTRIBUTION DATE |
| Member / Payee (4–19) | MEMBER MLC NUMBER · MEMBER NAME · MEMBER IPI NAME NUMBER · MEMBER ISNI · PAYEE MLC NUMBER · PAYEE NAME · PAYEE IPI NAME NUMBER · PAYEE ISNI · ADMINISTRATOR MLC NUMBER · ADMINISTRATOR NAME · ADMINISTRATOR IPI NAME NUMBER · ADMINISTRATOR ISNI · ORIGINAL PUBLISHER MLC NUMBER · ORIGINAL PULISHER NAME (sic — the typo is the MLC's own, in the official layout) · ORIGINAL PUBLISHER IPI NAME NUMBER · ORIGINAL PUBLISHER ISNI |
| Usage context (20–28) | USAGE PERIOD START DATE · USAGE PERIOD END DATE · DSP IDENTIFIER · DSP NAME · CONSUMER OFFERING · STOREFRONT · USE TYPE · TERRITORY · VOLUNTARY LICENSE IDENTIFIER |
| Work (29–37) | MLC SONG CODE · MEMBER SONG IDENTIFIER · ISWC · WORK PRIMARY TITLE · WORK ALTERNATIVE TITLE · WORK WRITER LIST · WORK WRITER IPI NAME NUMBER LIST · WORK WRITER ISNI LIST · WORK PAYABLE % |
| Recording (38–43) | DSP TRACK ID · ISRC · RECORDING TITLE · RECORDING VERSION TITLE · RECORDING DISPLAY ARTIST NAME · DURATION |
| Product (44–51) | ICPN · CATALOG NUMBER · PRODUCT TITLE · PRODUCT VERSION TITLE · PRODUCT DISPLAY ARTIST NAME · LABEL · DISTRIBUTOR · RELEASE DATE |
| Transaction (52–62) | PROCESSING TYPE · CORRECTION INDICATOR · SENDER TRANSACTION ID · NUMBER OF USAGES · LONG-TRACK ADJUSTED USAGES · EFFECTIVE ROYALTY RATE · SHARE ADJUSTED ROYALTY RATE · ROYALTY AMOUNT · LATE FEE AMOUNT · INTEREST AMOUNT · DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT |
The Work Summary layout aggregates the same money at musical-work level, using a subset of the detail vocabulary, in four groups:
| Field type | Fields (layout order) |
|---|---|
| Payee (1–9) | PAYEE NAME · PAYEE MLC NUMBER · PAYEE IPI NAME NUMBER · ORIGINAL PULISHER NAME (sic) · ORIGINAL PUBLISHER MLC NUMBER · ORIGINAL PUBLISHER IPI NAME NUMBER · ADMINISTRATOR MLC NUMBER · ADMINISTRATOR NAME · ADMINISTRATOR IPI NAME NUMBER |
| Usage context (10–15) | USAGE PERIOD START DATE · USAGE PERIOD END DATE · TERRITORY · USE TYPE · DSP IDENTIFIER · DSP NAME |
| Work (16–21) | MLC SONG CODE · MEMBER SONG IDENTIFIER · ISWC · WORK PRIMARY TITLE · WORK WRITER LIST · WORK PAYABLE % |
| Transaction (22–27) | PROCESSING TYPE · NUMBER OF USAGES · ROYALTY AMOUNT · LATE FEE AMOUNT · INTEREST AMOUNT · DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT |
Both layouts are recognised automatically by header fingerprint — you do not tell it which file is which. Every row is normalized into the common earnings-tape schema: the MLC administers the United States blanket mechanical licence, so all MLC income is typed as US mechanicals, keyed to the usage period, the DSP and the work. The paid figure is DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT, which the layout defines as royalty + late fees + interest; the three components are kept as separate columns too, so the tape can show you exactly how much of a distribution was late-fee money rather than fresh royalties.
Your statement never leaves your browser. Parsing, normalization and workbook generation run in WebAssembly inside the tab. Nothing is uploaded; you can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and everything still works.
The tie-out proves the extraction, not the source. Where a statement carries printed totals, extracted rows must sum to them to the cent or the discrepancy is shown. The MLC's TSVs are raw machine exports with no printed grand total, so they report as SELF-CONSISTENT — internal checks passed, nothing stated to reconcile against. That is normal for this format, not a defect.
Safely: via Excel's Data > From Text/CSV import, setting identifier columns to Text — the routine the MLC's own help article teaches. Or skip the wizard entirely: this converter reads the TSV as the layout defines it and gives you a ready .xlsx.
Royalty Detail has one row per sound-recording transaction from DSP usage reporting — the fine grain. Work Summary aggregates the same distribution at musical-work level. The converter accepts both and detects which one you dropped.
Because the paid figure is DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT = royalty + late fees + interest. When DSPs pay late-fee settlements or interest, those arrive in fields 60 and 61 on top of the royalty itself. The earnings tape sums DISTRIBUTED AMOUNT and keeps the components visible.
No. Parsing runs in WebAssembly in your browser tab. The files never leave your machine, and no account is needed to see your results.
New to statement anatomy? Start with how to read a royalty statement.
Drop the file exactly as the Member Hub delivered it. One normalized dataset, a six-sheet Excel earnings tape, identifiers intact. Free, in your browser.
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