[vorbis] International Standard Recording Code

Ralph Giles
Wed, 07 Feb 2001 10:51:38 -0000

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Moritz Grimm wrote:

> Hi!
>
>
> First, here's some background information: Some friends and I are
making
> music with our computers for some years now. We release our tracks on
> the Internet for free for private use, both in the original module
> format and currently MP3. Within the next weeks or months (depending on
> the leisure time i get), our web site www.kolabore.de will be vorbisised
> for reasons I won't have to explain in here. :)
>
> While we definitely plan to continue releasing our music without asking
> money for it from private persons that have internet access, we're also
> interested in protecting and commercially distributing it through the
> label we're currently building up. Therefore, I got us an ISRC
> Registrant Code.
>
> The ISRC contains 12 characters and is built up like this one:
>
>      DE             R46             01                00001
>
> Country Code     Registrant   Year of Reference    5 numbers to
> (ISO, 2 chars)   (3 chars)    (2 numbers, 01	   identify the
> 			      means 2001)	   recording
>
> The registrant code can be something between (including) 001 and ZZZ.
> The year of reference is the year in which the ISRC was assigned to a
> recording.
>
> Currently, the ISRC only identifies recordings (both audio and
> audio/video), but it is also supposed to replace the fearsome label code
> within the next 3 to 5 years. It is quite important for the music
> industry, because it is designed for every digital media (especially
> CD-A, where it is placed in the Q-Channel) and (will) allow(s) to
> determine, which artists have to be compensated, e.g. for digital radio
> or internet broadcasting. The ISRC together with OGG doesn't make free
> music (or videoclips) less free, but it helps artists to be compensated
> without forcing anybody to use these sucky codecs the music industry
> would like to see.
>
> IMHO, OGG should be capable to store the ISRC somewhere else than the
> comment string, though. It would be pretty great if there was a reserved
> place for it, similar to the ARTIST or TITLE field. This would have
> several advantages:
>
> - Users that want to read the blahblah the author or provider of the
> file writes into the comments usually don't want to see some strange
> numbers.
> - Software that makes use of the ISRC can read it easily because the
> field has a name it can look for.
> - The ISRC field has a fixed format: 12 characters, the first 5 are
> alphanumeric, the remaining 7 are only numbers. A good way to detect and
> prevent errors.
>
> I really hope that this could be achieved without changing the format
> and/or making current decoders useless. I doubt that the ISRC is worth
> that effort, but if not, implementing it would be great.

Not a problem, the vorbis comment header is completely extensible.
'ISRC'
sounds like a good tag name to me. I wouldn't suggest we canonize it yet,
but you should definitely go ahead and use it in your ogg files. (Like
CDDBID) it sounds like a great way to identify source material.

Players may or may not do anything useful with it, but none should have
any problem with it.

Is the ISRC meant to label recordings, or just particular publications of
them (like the UPC codes)?

FWIW,
 -ralph

> P.S.: FYI, the visual representation of the ISRC is also standardized.
> The upper example would be "ISRC DE-R46-01-00001", of course
without the
> quotes. Note the preceding "ISRC" and the dashes.

Only 46655 labels per country? Someone wasn't thinking ahead. The
two-digit year will be a scalability problem as well. Too bad. :-/


--
giles@ashlu.bc.ca