All About ISRC Codes: Read more to know why it’s so important for owners of music recordings. In the digital age, though it’s easy to share your recordings with the listeners, it’s important to have a mechanism that will accurately track the sales of your songs, and can be used for rights administration.
The ISRC system is designed to address those needs!
What is it?
Here are some basic facts about the ISRC system and its purpose:
- ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code
- The system is designed to uniquely identify music recordings.
- Each recording or version of a recording is assigned a unique code.
- Each code is a unique 12 digit number
- Codes can be obtained from 3 basic sources, directly from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), from an ISRC Manager or from a music service provider.
- The code is burnt into the recording
- It is the responsibility of the music producer to provide the code information when distributing the recordings.
- The code can be used to track sales and radio station play.
- The code can be used by performing rights societies to track usage for paying performance royalties.
Benefits of ISRC
The most important benefit is that it helps to keep a track of the sales (and downloads).
The ISRC system is the key to royalty collection for recordings in the digital information age.
Multiple Codes for a Song?
So, can there be Multiple ISRC codes for the same song?
Not really, because an ISRC code identifies a particular recording, not the work (composition and lyrical content) itself.
It means, if you remix a song, it should ideally have its own ISRC. In fact, different recordings, edits, and remixes of the same work should each have their own code.
Here’s a video that explains this topic more in detail:
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
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