Although the latest BPI statistics show that an all-time record of 98.6% of all UK single sales were digital (over 117 million!), the digital world has not fully divorced itself from its history in the real world. If you’re an artist selling your music online, you still need the essentials - EAN13 barcode, catalogue number and (most importantly) an ISRC for each track, or you simply cannot have your tracks on any of the major online stores. (As a label with 30 years’ operating experience and almost a thousand albums under our belt, this irony’s not lost on us!)

However, unless you work with them on a daily basis, ISRCs can look confusing. How are they made up? What do they mean - and what purpose do they serve? In the first of our Industry Insider articles, Revolver explains it all – read on to find out.

ISRCs, or International Standard Recording Codes, are actually defined as a worldwide standard as ISO 3901. Think of them like the music industry’s version of the ISBN system. There’s several mandatory elements, and a five character ‘free text’ area which the label can define.

Here’s a sample ISRC: GB-AB3-09-429-01

… and here’s what it means:

• Country code (as per the two-digit ISO country codes; for the UK, it’s GB)
• Three letter alphanumeric label code (e.g. AB3)
• Year of release (two digits, e.g. 09)
• Five characters which the original label defines. Some labels have complex ways of generating the last five digits, but we prefer to use the last three digits of the release’s catalogue number, and the number of the track in question (e.g. 42901)

ISRCs are unique to each track and can’t be reused. Occasionally clashes occur for whatever reason, and when they do you must reassign a new ISRC. The code’s used as a unique tracking device for helping to calculate royalties, tracking radio play and keeping tabs on if a track is included in a compilation or rereleased on another format (for example, released digitally, then later released on CD and 7″). If a track is remixed, it must have a new ISRC assigned to it – likewise, if the track length changes (for example, if a track’s made into a radio edit) then it must also receive a new ISRC. You can imagine how quickly some releases acquire lots of ISRCs!

You might sometimes see ISRCs written with hyphens. This is purely for readability – some online retailers like iTunes won’t accept them if they have hyphens in (the release will simply fail validation if they’re left in) but this isn’t the same for everyone.

Keeping a detailed list of all relevant metadata is one of the most crucial aspects of digital distribution as you manage catalogue across all the many hundreds of online stores, but if you’re a Revolver Digital artist, we handle all that tricky stuff – leaving you to focus on making music. If you’d like to find out more, browse through the rest of our site or get in touch with us.