ISRC ?

[chagzuki]

My CD is ready to be distributed. Now I'm wondering if I ought to get an ISRC number at this stage, before I go any further.

I'm not sure if it's necessary in order to collect royalties for airplay.

[chagzuki]

bump

[püRe]

http://www.ifpi.org/isrc/isrc_faq.html

[Har]

There used to be a very useful article on the Ampcast site explaining the ISRC codes at http://www.ampcast.com/artists/resource ... p?uid=6208

...but when I just checked that link is no longer working.
Luckily, I made a point of copying down the text from it when I first saw it, so to quote:

http://www.ampcast.com/artists/resource ... p?uid=6208

If you're doing your own mastering, you might have heard of some aspects of mastering that go beyond 'running a bunch of plugins and making it real loud'. One of these is ISRC codes- information that goes into a hidden 'subcode' area of your CD. Other subcodes include information about where the songs start and stop, and how long they are- this one stores identifying information.

ISRC codes are a means of tracking songs as they're played. This is both a clever thing and a sneaky source of great evilness- because most radio stations will not play your CD without 'em, and if you're in the USA you can ONLY legally get them by going to the RIAA. (There are other registrars for other countries, however.) In other words, this is a mechanism separating record companies from indie bedroom-or-garage-based bands, so if you didn't know about this it's one more reason why you might not get any airplay ever. Commercial radio is increasingly going to ISRC coding for royalty tracking, starting in Japan and Europe, and if you aren't putting out product with the required ISRC subcodes they won't deal with you at all.

At least so far you don't have to pay them- and it is an international, ISO standard, not RIAA-specific. RIAA are simply the US registrars. (more information at the RIAA ISRC page.) I registered ISRC codes for 'Airwindows' citing Ampcast as my distributor, using only a printer to print out the form, a pen to fill it out, and a scanner and modem to scan it in as a fax and send it to them (their preferred method, though snail mailing the form is also allowed.) It seems pretty routine and I saw no indication at all that they were trying to shut out indie folks- they're just not particularly aware of them, and don't care to help get the word out- the 'important' record companies already know.

What do you get for this? You get a code in the following pattern:

two characters for country of origin

three characters for the registrant (yes, that means there can only be an absolute maximum of forty-six thousand, six hundred and fifty six record companies in any given year- you only get 0-9 and A-Z. With only ONE more character they could've had 1.6 million possible labels. I guess we should count ourselves lucky it's not two characters, for only 1296 possible labels getting to be played on the radio and pressed in pressing plants)

two characters for the last two digits of the year of the recording (hey, non-Y2K compliance!)

five characters for a designation code- every single song you ever release is to have a distinct value here. It's by-song rather than by-album.

How does this work? Radio station CD players can have special circuitry for reading 'subcodes' on the CD, which is wired to a recording system for figuring royalties. When a song is played, the CD player reads the subcode, and records which song is being played.

What you need to write subcodes is your CD burner and the proper software- for the Mac, Roxio Jam and Digidesign Masterlist CD can do this, and for Windows, Sonic Foundry CD Architect can do it. Once you have a registrant code (like a 'record company code'), you just burn your CDs in one of these programs, and for each song you plug in that song's unique identifier, like it says above. Country, your record company, last two digits of the year, and then your 'serial number' for each song individually. You should keep records on this as well, even if they're all your own songs. If you do ever get paid royalties through this, you'll probably just be given a list of numbers and you have to sort out who got paid what, and which song was getting the airplay.

I've seen ISRC codes called watermarking. This is not watermarking, by itself. Unlike the copy control mechanisms on DVD audio, the ISRC code that can be put on CDs is alongside the audio- NOT embedded into it. Technically you might call it 'interleaved' with the audio- the data is repeated every eighteen milliseconds- but it does not alter, replace or change the audio data in any way. Subcodes go along with the audio data but aren't played- if you don't put in an ISRC code, those subcodes are blank. If you rip the song to an mp3, the subcodes are ignored completely.

That is not to say radio stations couldn't make real watermarking out of the information- and in fact that is what they are gearing up to do. Radio stations will grab the audio off your ISRC coded CD, grab the codes too, put together a resulting product that more or less ruins the CD's subtle dithering and sticks a high-intensity watermark on it, and play that instead of the actual CD. On the bright side you'll get paid when it's played. The downside is, if you don't have ISRC codes you won't be played no matter what, so there will no longer be any pure audio content over the airwaves.

RIAA labels are also likely to burn commercial CDs with the watermark version of the ISRC code mixed in with the audio. It'd also be on the CD subcode, but they are sure to want the ability to police their stuff more effectively, such as being able to identify a sample's origin from the watermark.

However, as a CD producer you can simply adapt to this knowing that the real CDs don't have to be corrupted- it's fairly unlikely you'll get on the radio anyhow as the Big Five, sorry, Four (BMG, Sony, Universal, WEA) will be fighting each other for play time. If for some reason a radio station decides it does want to play you- then it can pee in your audio stream with a watermark based on your ISRC code, cram the result through intensive broadcast processing (heavy multiband compression etc) and play that. If anyone still likes the result, and buys the CD, they will get the clean version in their homes, if you stick to encoding ISRC on the subcodes of the CD, without watermarking anything.

In a world of insane overly-consolidated top 40 radio, that's probably the best that can be expected.

Chris Johnson

[chagzuki]

Thanks Har, that's just the kind of info I was after. Man, more things to sort out.

[citizenchunk]

ISRC codes are encoded into a CD's PQ information. therefore, they must be added before manufacturing takes place. often, they are inserted in the mastering stage before the PMCD is created--but i believe that they can also be inserted at the manufacturing plant.

if your album is ready to be distributed (and i'm guessing that that means "pressed, and ready to go") then it might be too late.

besides, i think (not sure about this) that you need to pay for ISRC registration.

none of the independents (and not many small labels) i've dealt with have used ISRC codes.

hope this helps.

== chunk

[Har]

besides, i think (not sure about this) that you need to pay for ISRC registration.

none of the independents (and not many small labels) i've dealt with have used ISRC codes.

Nope...free to register. More information here:

http://www.riaa.com/issues/audio/isrc_faq.asp

(yeah, it's...shudder...the RIAA, but as the article I posted earlier explains: they're acting as registrar; the same way companies like NetSol can act as a domain-name registrar. You can register an ISRC code for free through the RIAA, but you're not joining the RIAA when you do)

But as you mentioned, indie release music with no real intention to target the major radio avenues may really have no real use for these. But if it's free to get them and use them...you could be doing a little bit of "future-proofing" in case these codes become more wide-spread somehow later on.

[Innominandum]

If you're Canadian I can issue your ISRC codes for you. That saves you having to register with CRIA and uncessarily using up a registrant code for a single release. http://www.ark11.com/isrc/

[chagzuki]

What do you mean, 'using up a registrant code'?

BTW, I'm UK.

[Innominandum]

What happens when you sign up with RIAA, CRIA, or in your case PPL UK, you are assigned a registrant code. Each person with a registrant code is able to allocate 99999 designation codes (song codes) per year. But there are a limited number of registrant codes per nation.

There's a lot of room for registrants right now, but if everybody went and got a code for their band, they would quickly run out. If you're looking for ISRC codes, there's a lot of people that will do it for free on the Internet. Including myself for Canada, CD Baby in the United States, and maybe someone in the UK?

http://www.riaa.com/issues/audio/isrc_faq.asp

[Steven West]

This is interesting stuff!

So Innominandum, my first CD back in 2000 was mastered and pressed handled at a 'one stop shop' so to speak. I believe they have a deal with CinRam? I never even thought about ISRC codes then - so would that have been on the master they did for me, or would've I had to specify that? Now I'm doing my own masters and replications using a older Pioneer Audio CD deck, and I'm stuck buying 'Digital Audio Recordable CD's' ('Data CD-R' won't work. ). So is there ANY ISRC codes embedded on these, or after I title songs and write the TOC to finalise the master and/or copies?

I'd love to get my latest CD's 'mastered and replicated' professionally again (not sure WHEN that will be), so if this ISRC thing is up to me - I better redo my first CD just to be sure as well.

[Innominandum]

I never even thought about ISRC codes then - so would that have been on the master they did for me, or would've I had to specify that?

Most mastering places leave it up to the artist or record label to supply ISRC codes. Most mid-sized to large record labels are able to create their own ISRC codes. There aren't a lot of options for project labels or artists.

If they did assign your songs ISRC numbers, I hope they would've made you a list. These are the identifiers for your intellectual property, so it's important you know what your identifiers are.

ISRC codes are mostly used by broadcasters. If you're not planning or expecting your material to be widely broadcasted, I wouldn't sweat it. If you're starting a new project, think about doing it if it's not an inconvenience.

If you're planning on selling your product in stores, try getting a UPC/EAN code before mastering. This also goes on the CD itself, as well as on the packaging.

So is there ANY ISRC codes embedded on these, or after I title songs and write the TOC to finalise the master and/or copies?

I'm not familiar with that product. If you run Windows, I believe Exact Audio Copy can extract ISRC codes. I'm pretty sure there's other programs out there. This way you can determine if your CD was assigned ISRCs or not.

so if this ISRC thing is up to me - I better redo my first CD just to be sure as well.

I wouldn't sweat it. ISRC is just a catalog system. You don't need it, it's just nice to have.

[Steven West]

PHEW! I'm in with SOCAN, and The National Library and all that - so I was hoping it wasn't a real BIGGIE. I'm lucky if I get a spin on a local community radio station at best anymore. And like you say, if I take off like Moby or Bryan Adams - I'll let the big wigs and exec's worry about all that catalog crappola stuff for me.

I remember a interview with Thom Yorke and how pissed off he was that Radiohead could finish a CD master in January, but the label wouldn't release it till August because of all this 'watermarking' needed to be done. Thom was ranting 'It's digital! Who gives a fig if it's ripped and copied nowadays!'
Which made sense to me. But if it's the broadcasters and union standards at work here - I can also see that aspect now as well.

Thanks!

[chagzuki]

Having looked at lots of information, I'm still confused as to how the code should be formatted during CD burning. I'm clear that no hyphens are used, so I assumed no spaces also, but should the 'ISRC' prefix be included? I assume it shouldn't.