Do you want to sell your songs through a digital distributor? Any interest in using the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com music store to make money off of your recordings?
Well then, you'll need ISRC codes for your music.
What is an ISRC code you ask? ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code and it's a 12 digit alpha numeric code to identify a recording.
It's important to distinguish at this point the difference between a recording and a song. A song could have many versions, radio edits, remixes, acoustic versions. However a recording is a single version of a song. If I recorded the song "Blogs Rule" and released it on an album or as a single I would assign "Blogs Rule" an ISRC. Then if someone wanted to include that recording on a compilation disc, that ISRC would go with it to that compilation. Now, if someone wanted to do an extended dance remix of the song then a new code would have to be generated for that new recording.
Quick aside here, the term ISRC code drives me crazy it's like saying ATM machine, it's redundant. Why would we say International Standard Recording Code Code? We wouldn't, but alas, there isn't much choice in the matter, just saying ISRC sounds wrong and I need to learn to live with it.
Back to the matter at hand.
Think of this code like you would a bar code on a can of soup at the grocery store. When that can gets scanned, a computer somewhere knows that the store now has one less can of soup than it did a few minutes ago. It's the exact same thing in the world of digital music distribution. Except replace the can of soup with a song and the bar code with an ISRC code. So you can see why it's important to have these codes, because you can't digitally distribute a song without one.
So how do you get them?
Most independent musicians have to go through a middle man to get their music into the iTunes Music Store, the Amazon store or any other digital music retailer. These companies which include, TuneCore and CD Baby, will assign codes to your songs if you don't already have them. It's all part of the sign up process or the process of adding new music to your account, easy, right?
Another option would be to register to get your own code so you could then generate more codes for all the recordings you're releasing. This might be the place to show you what an ISRC code looks like.
US-XXX-10-YYYYY
(The dashes are not part of the code, but help distinguish the sections of the code.)
US is the country code, of course if your recording is being sold outside of the United States you would have a different country code, BR for Brazil, DE for Germany and so on.
Next is the XXX, this is the most important part of the code, it's known as the Registrant Code. These three digits are what you are assigned when you register, in the United States this is the website to visit to find all the application information to register. There is a one time fee of $75 to be assigned a code, so I would say it only makes sense to buy one if you're a small label who will be releasing a lot of music.
10 is the year code so of course in 2011 that number will switch to 11.
YYYYY is the number identifying a unique recording. Usually the first song released in a new year will be numbered 00001 the next song would be 00002 and so on until the end of the year.
A final option in getting ISRCs for your recordings is to have your mastering studio assign codes for you. I actually have a US ISRC code and I assign a code to every song I master. It's easy to do and saves clients some effort, it's a nice thing we can do that has no additional fees attached.
Additional links:
ISRC wikipedia page
USISRC.ORG
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