What are ISRC and EAN/UPC codes?
Conceptually very similar to the ISBN number used for books, the ISRC (acronym for International Standard Recording Code) is a 12-character code defined to uniquely identify a music track song). Unfortunately, over the years very few artists have adopted this standard and currently less than one percent Audio CDs use the ISRC. Each ISRC is a unique and permanent identifier for a specific recording which can be permanently encoded into a product as its digital fingerprint. Encoded ISRC provide the means to automatically identify recordings for royalty payments. The ISRC is encoded in digital sound carriers in the pre-mastering or authoring process of an audio CD in accordance with the specification on the format used. Therefore, the ISRC should be allocated in each recording when a Master is completed and the decision to release a recording has been made. Normally the audio mastering software used will allow an ISRC to be associated with each track. In the case of Compact Discs the ISRC
