(in the US) Mechanical licenses are compulsory; you don't need permission, you can just follow the forms and pay the fees set by the Copyright Royalty Board (appointed by the Librarian of Congress). You can ask the rightsholder to negotiate a lower fee, but there's no need for consent of the rightsholder if you notify as required (within 30 days of recording and before distribution) and pay the set fees.

Thanks for clarifying. Sometimes I forget that HN has a lot experts floating around who take things in a very literal and legalistic way. I was speaking in more general terms, and missed that you were being very precise with your language.

Compulsory licenses are interesting aren't they? It just feels wrong. If Metallica doesn't want me to butcher their songs, why should the be forced to allow it?

They are very interesting. IMHO, it's a nice compromise between making sure the artists are paid for their work, and giving them complete control over their work. Licensing for radio-style play is also compulsory, and terrestrial radio used to not even have to pay the recording artists (I think this changed?), but did have to track and pay to ASCAP.

As a consumer, it would amazing if there were compulsory licenses for film and tv; then we wouldn't have to subscribe to 70 different services to get to the things we want to see. And there would likely be services that spring up to redistribute media where the rightsholders aren't able to or don't care to; it might be pulled from VHS that fans recorded off of TV in the old days, but at least it'd be something.

Any live band performing a song is subject to mechanical licensing as much as a recording artist. Typically the venue pays it, just like how radio stations pay royalties. This system exists because historically, that's how music reproduction worked. You hire some musicians to play the music you want to hear. Copyright applied to the score, the lyrics, and so on. The 'mechanical' rights had to come later, because recording hadn't been invented yet!