Unluckily most of the sound recording copyright owners do not know the importance of ISRC. It is because of the lack of information and awareness.

This short post should tell you all about ISRC codes.

First Question: What is an ISRC Code?

Answer: It is a 12 character code excluding hyphen (CC-ORG-YY-NNNNN).

Where:
CC- is the country code (US for United States for example).
ORG – uniquely identifies the registrant. This is the registrant unique code.
YY – is the registration year of a specific track to ISRC. Take note this is different from copyright registration year or year the track has been commercially released.
NNNNN – a unique number of digits identifying the sound recording. In the entire ISRC catalog worldwide, no sound recording should have the same ISRC.

This guide has been written for an indie songwriter who has not enough financial and technical capability to start a music publishing company of his/her own.

I know, there are million of songwriters in the whole world waiting for their music to be “published”. The only way to do this is to start your own music publishing company. No matter how small, it is your own publishing and that is something you can be proud of. And if you kept writing through years, your catalog will grow so as your audience. And of course, good news will happen to things that are done as truthfully as seriously as possible.

Starting a business is an entrepreneurial activity; it means that failure and trouble is part of the process. You will need a strong heart, commitment, knowledge and passion to keep your business going. If you do not have, I recommend not to have your own publishing and have yourself employed either to other music publishing companies, I know there are tons out there.

1.) You are planning to cover song written by another songwriter and sell it on a CD or any mechanical forms of recording (vinyl, cassette tape).

2.) You are a movie producer and you plan to incorporate the song in the movie and sell it on a CD, DVD, Blue ray, etc.