Abstract

ISRC is the Identification of a recording. It is a unique code assigned to a particular recording of a song/video. This is like a fingerprint for a particular version of a recorded music. Music industry is thriving more and more every day in every country and a lot of money is being generated with music. So, it is important to keep our songs identified to the distributors to collect right amount of money earned by our particular version of a song. Music is generating money, majorly through the Distribution. So, it is important to keep these recorded songs identified to collect royalty accurately. ISRC keeps our recordings identified and trackable. This paper examines why the ISRC is important and explores the history & development of the ISRCs, it’s structure & technical aspects, it’s need in the collection of royalty accurately, challenges in its enforcement, its passive role to stop piracy of music.

Keywords: Royalty, Distributor, Recorded Music, ISRC, Revenue

Introduction:

Sound recording continues since 1860. Since the beginning of recording music, millions of songs have been created and it is very important to identify every single recorded song to collect right amount of its royalty. That’s why ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) gave the authority to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) to create and manage a specific and unique number for every recorded song. This Number is called ISRC (International Standard Recording Code). This Number is a unique ID of a recorded song. This number makes the song trackable and findable to the distributors to collect and manage royalties. This paper explores some possible dimensions of ISRC, whether it’s about the technical aspects of an ISRC, Impact & Applications of it or the control of ISRCs over the other elements. History and development of ISRC, why it is necessary now is a big question for the new age music industry. Because in the past, pattern of the collection of royalty was different. What problems were there for the distributors and publishers to collect royalty and how ISRC is helping them to overcome this problem today. ISRC is not just a random code assigned to a particular song. This code contains so many details in it. The structure of an ISRC is sanely designed structure which helps to manage it according to the country and year. Help in collection of royalty is the major function of this code, but it is also very helpful in other functions like identification of the particular version or recording of a song etc. But as we already know that nothing is perfect in this world, ISRC also has some limitations with it. These are not actually the problems; these are the challenges in the application of ISRCs which can affect the royalty distribution and proper management of the system. Retroactive use of ISRCs means that there are some recordings which has been released in the past, before the existence of ISRCs. We have to label those old songs with ISRCs and it is a very complicated process. And also, there is a possibility of data hindering, inaccurate revenue collection if any error occurs in the code. So, these kinds of challenges are there in the enforcement of this new system. The major contribution of the ISRCs is in the field of recording’s security from the piracy. When it was the time of cassettes and vinyl, there was a big problem of piracy. Cassettes were being copied illegally and pirates were earning more than the original creators. This increased with the entry of the CDs. It means when CDs came in the market, pirates started making their copies and earning more the artists/companies. The scenario was worst in the digital age, when music was just in the form of 0s and 1s. In the age of digital downloads piracy of music crashed the music market. After the entry of music streaming services and complete implementation of ISRCs, pirates of music took their step back. Today piracy of music is almost zero because there is no need of piracy today. When music is freely available on the streaming platforms, nobody will listen the pirated version. And these streaming platforms manage to control the millions of songs on their platform with the help of ISRCs. So, this is how ISRCs plays an important role to protect the songs from piracy. In this paper it is examined that the role of ISRCs to collect the right amount of revenue earned by the recorded song in the new age music industry, history and structure of ISRCs, Challenges in its enforcement.  

1. Technical Description of ISRC:

1.1. ISRC – History and Development: ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) was created to identify music recordings and music video recordings to collect correct royalties. (Lowe, 2019)

There is a large amount of music recordings on internet and in the physical world. When an artist records a song, it is very possible that the song is going to be listened by the whole world. Then it becomes necessary to collect the royalty correctly. Before this ISRC system every company had its own distribution systems in their country. But it was very difficult to create an identification of a particular recorded song to track it in the international market where a song is earning royalties from the other countries too. There was no global standard or labelling for the songs at that time. For the music companies, it was not that easy to collect royalties.

To protect the songs from this situation ISO 3901 (International Organisation for Standardization) introduced this system of ISRC in 1986. (International ISRC Registration Authority, 2021)

In 1986, ISO gave the authority to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) to regulate and manage ISRCs of the songs. ISRC was introduced in 1986. In 1988 responsibility was given to the IFPI by ISO.

ISO 3901 was updated in 2001 but it has been withdrawn. Recently it was updated in 2019.

All the information about ISRC is documented in the ISO’s TECHNICAL COMMIITTEE 46, SUB COMMITTEE 9 (TC 46/SC 9). (ISO, 2019)

After this every recorded song in this world has a unique ID or its own FINGERPRINT, which is very helpful to the artist, companies as well as distributors and the music streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud etc.

Japan was the pioneer of ISRCs. They started encoding ISRCs on CDs in 1989. After this, IFPI in association with RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) developed some detailed recommendations for ISRCs in 1991 and went into the effect from 1992.

ISO 3901 gave the responsibility to manage and control the ISRCs to the IFPI. IFPI doesn’t provide the ISRCs directly to the songs. IFPI appointed some National ISRC Agencies in every country and these agencies provide the ISRCs to the songs in their country. Examples of some National ISRC agencies are:

These are some National ISRC Agencies which creates the ISRCs for the particular regions/Countries under the shed of IFPI. On the other hand, there are some agencies in US which are known as ISRC Managers Agencies. The main function of these agencies is to manage the ISRCs. In America only those agencies can perform managerial work which are appointed by the ‘RIAA’ or ‘US ISRC’. RIAA published a list of their authorized manager’s agencies appointed by US ISRC on their website. (USISRC, 2014)

1.2. Technical Details of ISRC Codes: An ISRC contains some information in it. There are 12 characters in one ISRC. It is Alphanumeric that’s why it is containing digits (0-9) and Letters (A-Z). (International ISRC Registration Authority, 2021)

Here is an example of an ISRC of a song Bhairav: SE-5BU-24-58293. (Zoro, 2024)

Prefix	Prefix	Year	Designation Code
Country Code	Registrant Code	Year of Reference	Designation Code
SE	5BU	24	58293

Table No.1

Technically an ISRC is divided into three parts Prefix, Year of reference, Designation Code.

• Prefix:  A prefix of an ISRC contains 5 characters in it. Where first 2 characters of the prefix are the letters and next 3 characters may be alphanumeric for every song. First two letters are the Country Code. It shows that in which country this song is registered. Every country has its own unique country code for example:

USA – US, United Kingdom – GB, India – IN, Sweden – SE etc.

Other 3 characters of the prefix is called Registrant Code. This code defines a type of ownership or Legacy. These three alphanumeric characters identifies the specific entity responsible for assigning the ISRC to a recorded song.

• Year of Reference: Year of reference is the year in which the song is being released. An ISRC is provided before the song is released. But the year of reference does not reflect the recording year. This part of ISRC is only about when the recording is released.

For example: – 24 for 2024, 20 for 2020.

• Designation Code: This Code in ISRC is made of 5 digits. It’s assigned by the registrant (the entity that owns the recording) to a specific recording. There are five digits in it a designation code so there are 1,00,000 possibilities to make a recording more specific.

This is the basic structure of an ISRC according to the IFPI. (IFPI, 2014)

2. Impact and Applications of ISRC:

2.1. Distribution and Royalty Collection: An ISRC is assigned to the recording of a song/Music Video. One ISRC is assigned to the one song forever. For example, if an artist records an album of six songs. Each song will get its unique and different ISRC for ever. And after sometime that artist released the unplugged/Acoustic or any remixed version of those six songs (with same lyrics and compositions) then these remixed versions will also get their different and unique ISRC which will be completely different from the original song’s ISRC. (International ISRC Registration Authority, 2021)

So here it shows that ISRC is not about the song’s lyrics and its composition, it’s all about the recording of that song or the recorded version of that music.

An ISRC’s main function is to track the accuracy of the of royalties and to manage distribution task. A distributor is the medium to make musical recordings available to the public through different ways including digital platforms like download stores, music streaming platforms, radio stations as well as physical channels like CDs, Vinyl, cassettes etc.

Before the international labelling of the songs through ISRC’s it was not easy to track our recordings to see its status. Responsibility of the recorded music was completely on the music companies. They were the only one who had to handle it solely. And the fun fact is, there were so many music companies and each of them had their own set of rules and patterns of work. They were managing and labelling their recordings according to them. So, it was not easy for the distributors to manage the work of so many companies with their own rules, work patterns and style of labelling their songs. There was a need of a system which could make it easy to manage it on the global level.

Now after the ISRC system, task of tracking musical recordings has become easier not just for the distributors and music companies but for everyone. There are so many search engines on internet available for everyone where anybody can find any song with the help of its ISRC. If we want to know the ISRC of a song these search engines will help to find it too. There is a website called “www.isrcfinder.com” to track a song with the help of an ISRC or track an ISRC of the song through the song’s details. For testing, song’s details with ISRC mentioned below:

This is how ISRCs helps to track a particular musical recording on internet and made it findable in the ocean of musical recordings. But the purpose of creating ISRC system was not just to find a song on internet. It was just an initial purpose of it. The root cause of making this system was to collect the accurate royalty of a particular musical recording.

Because a recording has its unique number or ISRC, it has become much easier to calculate and collect its royalty from the stores.

Today most of the music is being consumed on the music streaming platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora etc.

 And the royalty given by these platforms to the artists are very different from each other. For example, on an average “Spotify pays $0.00318 per stream, Tidal pays $0.01284 per stream, Apple Music pays $0.008 per stream, Amazon Music pays $0.00402 per stream, YouTube Music pays $0.002 per stream, Pandora pays $0.00133 per stream, Deezer pays $0.0011 per stream”. (VIRPP, 2023)

All these music streaming platforms has their own artist’s payout patterns and styles. They pay different amounts to the artists from each other. Numerous factors are responsible for that their subscribers/Members, subscription amount, countries/territories, users and a lot more. Also, there are freemium and premium models for users. The users who are using premium membership gets interruption free music. Whereas those who use free plan or freemium membership have to see advertisements.

After considering all these details, a streaming platform decides a particular payout amount for per stream/view. So that’s the reason, an artist gets different amounts from different platforms for the same number of streams. For example, if an artist is earning 1000 dollars for every 1 million streams on Spotify, it doesn’t mean that the artist will get same amount of money for the same numbers of streams on the YouTube. Also, it is very possible that artists can get different amounts for the same number of streams on same streaming platform. For example, if an artist get 1 million streams on Spotify and the listeners are using premium membership then the artist will get 1000 dollars for those streams. But if the artist gets 1 million streams from the freemium members, then the amount earned by the artist will be lesser than the 1000 dollars. Only this case is not just the possibility. Same thing will happen if an artist gets the same number of streams but from the different countries. (Johnston, 2024)

To manage different payouts for the same recording from the different streaming platforms, ISRC plays an important role to collect right amount of royalty from all the streaming stores according to their payout plans and patterns.

2.2. Challenges and problems for ISRC: In the applications of ISRCs there are some challenges we can face. As we know that ISRC deals with the recordings of the music and music videos. Every different recording or different version of a music will get its different ISRC, no matter recording has same lyrics or same composition. The major challenge for the ISRCs comes when its dealing with REMIXES or Remixed versions of the song. Because there are no specific limitations or guidelines mentioned by the IFPI for the remixed songs to be different from original song. It means a remix version with less differences (minimal changes) can get its different ISRC.

Potentially, there are chances of confusion between the original work and the remix version if a single ISRC is assigned to the both original and remixed version.

Here are some problems & challenges associated with ISRC:

• Inconsistent Use: ISRC has been adopted globally but still there is a possibility in which some part of music industry it is not in use. That can lead hindering data tracking.
• Retroactive Application: Generally, ISRC is assigned before the release of the song. It becomes very complex and time consuming when we have to assign ISRCs to the already released songs in the past.
• Limited Information: ISRC is made to deal with royalties only. So, it doesn’t contain detailed information about the recording. Additional metadata systems are required to identify other details like artists, titles etc.
• Misinterpretation: There can be confusion between ISRCs and other identifiers like ISWC (International Standard Music-Work code).
• Enforcement: Enforcing consistent and accurate ISRC on the global level is challenging.
• Difficulties with Royalty Distribution: Inaccurate ICSRs or improper assignments of the codes can create a problem in the distribution of royalties to the artists.
• Data Incompleteness: Incomplete ISRC data can create a problem in the accuracy of the analysis. Researchers can predict the wrong trends and the wrong direction of the music industry.

These were some potential problems in the application of the ISRCs. But thankfully there are very less chances of these happenings. Some of them are hypothetical in nature. (ISRC, 2014)

3. ISRC and its control over other elements:

3.1. Direct attack on Music Piracy: Music piracy is not a new concept. This has been happening since music began to be recorded. There is not a particular date of its starting but it can be seen in late 19s and 20s also, when phonographic wax cylinders were the only medium of sound recording. After that when it comes to the era of gramophones, there were shellac discs and vinyl discs. This was the time when music industry started growing and the demand of the recorded music was increasing. After noticing this increasing demand of recorded music, pirates started making money out of it. They started piracy of music through the recording of radio programs and so on. With the passage of time technology was evolving and world was introduced by some new techniques of recording in the music industry. Tape cassettes and Compact discs came in existence but with the help of modern technology it was easier to make copies of these magnetic and optical discs. We were entering the 21^st century and in the world of digits – THE DIGITAL WOLRD. It was the last year of 20^th century the digital medium of piracy was introduced to the world; it was an application called NAPSTER. In June 1999, an application was created by “Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker” which was sharing data peer to peer. It was Napster. (Snider, 2024)

People were downloading MP3s and sharing it with each other on the internet. As a result, there was a huge decline in music sales. Beginning of 21^st century was not that good for the sales of music. (Waldfogel, 2011)

This much loss of music industry was unbearable. And the reason was just one – Piracy. Artists were not getting proper royalties, even if their music was being consumed by a huge number of listeners.  After entering into the world of technology some companies like pandora, Apple music etc. introduced the system of online streaming. Where music was available in the form of a large library. If anybody wants to listen to their favourite music, they need to be the member of that streaming platform. This system is adopted universally. Today, Spotify is leading the music industry in the field of online music streaming business. This system (Online Streaming) reduced the danger of piracy. Because now nobody has to pay for pirated version of a song when there is an option of streaming music online for free (Freemium models of streaming platforms like Spotify) or a minimal charge to get access of all the songs. (Cuofano, 2018)

The New System of streaming music online completely removed its piracy. Because they attacked directly on the need of the piracy. If there was no need for piracy then no one would do it. With the streaming system online, it became very easy to get full control on our recordings. Tracking it online became much easier than before. With the help of the ISRC, collecting right amount of revenue generated by our recording became convenient. If there was no ISRC system, it would not have been easy to track the revenue of the songs on streaming platforms. And if this had not happened then music piracy would probably still be happening at some level. Therefore, not directly but in a way ISRC is considered as a good step against music piracy.

3.2. Music Identification’s Future: Today we have ISRC for royalties tracking, ISWC (International Standard Music Work Code) to protect the mechanical rights for our musical composition and lyrics, ISMN (International Standard Music Number) to label our song in the catalogue of music libraries across the world as a product. In the future these different systems can be merged and a single signature can be created as a unique identification of a song. A visual representation can be made out of it, not just for sounds but for videos too. With the help of the artificial intelligence there are so many possibilities to give it a direction.

Result/Conclusion:

In the past, there were so many systems to maintain the musical work whether it was distribution, Publishing, protecting rights or revenue collection. Every task was being performed with some methods. But with the evolution of the technology and evolution of the music industry, new problems were rising every day. Problems like contrast in the distribution methods on global scale, difficulty in royalty collection, piracy, hiding actual data. Data of revenue generated by the recordings was hidden, because there was no authority on international level to control and manage it. ISO 3901’s step to introduce a new system of revenue tracking and recording management – ISRC, was a revolutionary step. Today, where Millions of songs are being uploaded on the internet everyday it becomes mandatory to manage them in a subtle way. When an ISRC is assign to a recording, it becomes findable and trackable to collect right amount of royalty accurately. It has become a need of the modern music industry. Not just in the royalty and revenue collection, ISRC plays an important role to other things like identification of a particular version of a recording, not directly but passively it helps the music industry to reduce the problem of piracy. Most importantly collection of accurate revenue through the song’s royalty has become much easier than before. Still there are possibilities to improve this system for the future. It can be more convenient in the future if it collaborates with the Artificial Intelligence.

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