March 14, 2016

The international trade body for the recording industry, IFPI, has partnered with the world’s biggest digital Collective Management Organisation, SoundExchange, to create a new website that will make it easier to identify sound recordings.

IFPI says that the ISRC Search Site will provide access to nearly 20 million unique recordings enabling recording artists, rights owners and music services to quickly identify data associated with sound recordings.  The initiative will “increase transparency and efficiency in the handling of data about recordings”, IFPI says.

ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is the standardised identifier for recorded music and is a unique code assigned to every single music recording or music video to ensure their usage can be tracked and accounted for.  IFPI manages the ISRC system globally under an appointment from the International Organisation for Standardisation.

For the first time, ISRC codes, which are supplied directly from record companies across the globe, will be publicly accessible and searchable.

The free search tool, which is an extension to the ISRC website managed by IFPI, will allow anyone to search either by artist/track or by ISRC code to find various products that a given recording appears on.  Selected data of interest can then be transferred to a “cart” where it can be downloaded as a CSV file.

IFPI says that the site is “an important first step in boosting accuracy, automation and efficiency within the data-processing that underpins the use of digital music by broadcasters, digital music services and any company that uses music online”.  For further information and for links to the ISRC Search Site, click here.