Master Publishing & Rights Management 2026 – Unlock Your Success Story!

An ISRC code is a unique identifier for a sound recording. It’s assigned to each master recording so that the specific recording can be tracked across platforms, services, and time, which helps ensure accurate attribution and royalties. It isn’t a barcode for physical media, nor a code for the record label itself, and it doesn’t identify the underlying musical work—that’s what an ISWC does. ISRCs live in the recording’s metadata or are linked to the track in distributors and streaming services. They follow a structure like CC-XXX-YY-NNNNN, where CC is the country code, XXX is the registrant, YY is the year of reference, and NNNNN is the designation code. For example, US-ABC-21-00012.