ISRC

International Standard Recording Code

Description

The International Standard Recording Code or short ISRC is an identification system for audio and music video recordings. It is standarized by the IFPI in ISO 3901:2001 and used by IFPI members to assign unique identifiers to every distinctable recording they release.

Structure

The ISRC is a 12-byte alpha-numeric string (only upper-case latin letters and arabic numerals, [A-Z0-9]) of the form

CCOOOYYSSSSS

with

• C a 2-character country code (containing letters and/or digits)
• O a 3-character owner code (cantaining letters and/or digits)
• Y a 2-character year code (containing only digits)
• S a 5-character serial number (containing only digits).

The country code defines the country of residence of the owner. The owner code is assigned by the IFPI to its members. The year defines the year in which the ISRC was allocated to the recording. The serial number or designation code is assigned by the owner and allows the distinction of recordings with the same country, year and owner codes.

ISRC and MusicBrainz

At the moment MusicBrainz and it's applications do not support storrage or extraction of ISRC. This might change when some of the ideas in TrackGrouping are implemented.

Further Information

• Documentation and further information about ISRC by the IFPI
• Wikipedia page about ISRC
• GRid, another IFPI standard for identifying releases of music in electronic networks
• ISWC, an ISO standard for identifying musical works
• ISMN, an ISO standard for identifying printed music publications

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Author: FuchsNeedsEditing