MEIEA Summit 2025

Kris Ahrend is the Chief Executive Officer of The MLC, where he leads the organization in its mission to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time. Under his direction, The MLC has achieved total royalties distributed of more than $2.7 billion and grown membership to over 50,000 Members to date.
Before joining The MLC, Kris served as the President of U.S. Shared Services for Warner Music Group (WMG), where he led the development and launch of WMG’s Center of Excellence for Shared Services in Nashville and oversaw the operations of fifteen different functional teams providing a variety of administrative, financial, and legal services to WMG’s U.S.-based publishing teams, record labels, and corporate divisions. Prior to launching the Center of Excellence, Ahrend served as the Head of Business & Legal Affairs for WMG’s catalog label, Rhino Records, in Los Angeles, and then led a large legal, financial, and administrative shared services organization within WMG that he helped to create.

Kris started working in the music industry in New York City, where he held positions in the Law Department at Sony Music and then the Business and Legal Affairs Department at Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
A graduate of Binghamton University in New York and the Washington & Lee School of Law, Kris began his legal career as a law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then spent several years in private practice, working in the New York office of the international law firm, Simpson Thacher.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) is a nonprofit organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office pursuant to the historic Music Modernization Act of 2018.
In January 2021, The MLC began administering blanket mechanical licenses to eligible streaming and download services (digital service providers or DSPs) in the United States. The MLC collects the royalties due under those licenses from the DSPs and pays songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. 
The MLC has built a publicly accessible musical works database, as well as a portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. These tools help ensure that creators and music publishers are paid properly. work to level up any artists’ journey
together.
Before building 24/7 Artists, she co-founded House Studios – an influential recording space in
the DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) music scenes that contributed to the success of artists
like Logic, Ari Lennox, Wale, VicBlends, and Mannywellz.