How to get an ISRC without a distributor
14 · · 13 min read · Español
Apply to the ISRC agency for your territory for a prefix of your own, then assign every code yourself. In the United States that is one payment of $95 to the RIAA’s US ISRC Agency and nothing after it. Every guide on this subject opens by telling you the codes are free, and every one of them is right. The sentence that never follows is the one worth having: free codes are issued out of somebody else’s prefix, and the prefix is the only part of this anybody sells.
- The ISRC standard reserves assignment to the recording’s owner or exclusive licensee, and permits a third party to assign codes only when that party has been appointed an ISRC Manager.
- Three routes exist: a prefix of your own from a national agency, single codes bought online from the International ISRC Agency, or your distributor’s prefix at upload.
- A Rights Owner Prefix from the US ISRC Agency costs a one-time $95 administrative fee, with no cost per code after it.
- Canada’s application has moved to Panorama, formerly SOPROQ. Registrant codes issued since 1 June 2021 carry the CB country code; earlier ones keep CA.
- A code assigned by a distributor is still the recording’s code. It survives a sale or a licence unchanged, and the ISRC Manager must supply its details to the owner.
Do you have to go through a distributor at all?
No. The ISRC standard reserves assignment to the recording’s owner or exclusive licensee, and permits a distributor to assign a code only where that distributor has been appointed an ISRC Manager.
The ISRC Handbook — the standard’s own rulebook, 4th Edition, 2021 — puts it in the negative, which is the version worth reading twice:
An ISRC shall be assigned only by the owner of a recording or someone authorised as an ISRC Manager […] Except under the specific authorisation of the International ISRC Registration Authority, no other party shall assign an ISRC. In particular, a party receiving a recording for retailing, distribution, streaming, broadcast etc., shall not assign an ISRC but shall use the ISRC that was assigned by the owner.
Read the order of those sentences. Assignment belongs to the owner. Everything else is an exception the standard writes down and hedges, and the exception has a name: an ISRC Manager, appointed in that role by the International ISRC Registration Authority or by a national agency, and given a prefix set aside for assigning codes to other people’s recordings. The appointed list is public and it is not short — Believe, LANDR and Spotify are on it, each shown against the agency that appointed them.
So the upload box that fills itself in is not a rogue act. It is the standard’s escape hatch, working exactly as designed, for people who did not know there was a door.
What are you actually buying?
A prefix. An agency issues five characters, and the codes are the ones you build from those five characters yourself, at no charge, for as long as you keep releasing.
A twelve-character ISRC is three parts: the prefix, two digits for the year the code was assigned, and a five-digit designation code you allocate. Fixing a wrong ISRC after release takes the anatomy apart properly; the only part that matters here is which of the three somebody else is holding.
Nobody sells ISRCs, because there is nothing to sell — a code is five characters you were given, the year, and five digits you allocate. What an agency sells is the standing to be the party the standard calls the Registrant: the one whose assignment counts. Free codes are the easiest promise in this business to keep and every route keeps it. The prefix is the whole fucking transaction.
What are the three routes, and what does each one cost?
Three routes exist: a prefix of your own from a national agency, single codes bought online from the International ISRC Agency, or your distributor’s prefix at upload.
| The route | Who assigns | Whose prefix | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| A prefix of your own, from your national agency | You | Yours | US: $95 once, then nothing per code |
| Single codes, bought online from the International ISRC Agency | The Agency | Not published | £15 plus UK VAT for 30 credits; 3 credits a code |
| Your distributor, as an appointed ISRC Manager | The distributor | The distributor’s | Nothing |
The middle row is the one almost nobody knows exists. The International ISRC Agency assigns codes online to anyone with an account: you supply the recording’s metadata, it assigns the code, it writes the recording into the International ISRC Database, and if the recording already has a code it tells you that instead. Three credits a code against thirty credits for £15 makes ten codes for £15, or about £1.50 a track.
The Agency does not publish whose prefix those codes carry. On the other two routes the answer is documented; on this one it is not, and guessing at it here would be worth less to you than the gap.
Ten tracks a year and the arithmetic is close enough to be a coin toss. Fifty tracks and it stopped being a question two releases ago.
How do you apply in the United States?
Apply to the US ISRC Agency, which the RIAA runs: confirm you are United States-based and own the recordings, then pay a one-time administrative fee for a Rights Owner Prefix.
The agency states the price and the ceiling in its own words — “There is a one-time $95 administrative fee for the allocation of a Rights Owner Prefix,” and “Once you have this prefix there are no additional costs.” What the prefix carries is on its own page: “almost unlimited numbers of ISRCs (up to 100,000 ISRCs per year) to recordings that they own or control.”
Then the part that is true and nowhere in the marketing. A prefix arrives with a range of designation codes attached, and the range is sized to what the agency thinks you will need:
a large user might need the full range of 00000 to 99999 whereas an independent artist might be allocated 23800 to 23899
A hundred codes, not a hundred thousand. Estimate high on the form. A further range is a request to your agency rather than a catastrophe, but it is a request you make in the middle of a release week, and release weeks have enough going on.
The application also offers a Code Pack instead of a prefix, and recommends one or the other based on what you tell it. What a Code Pack costs is not published anywhere outside the application flow, so this page will not guess at it. Open the form, read the price, then decide.
How do you apply in Canada?
Canada’s ISRC application has moved to Panorama, formerly SOPROQ. Registrant codes issued since 1 June 2021 carry the CB country code, and codes issued before that date keep CA.
CONNECT Music Licensing, which used to run the process, now says so on its own page — “Panorama is now taking over the ISRC application process in Canada” — and states the prefix change as flatly as anyone could want: “As of June 1, 2021, Canada’s country code has changed to CB for new registrants only. Registrant codes assigned before this date will continue to use the original CA country code.” Panorama’s ISRC page carries the application route and prints the new shape, CB-YZ9, on the way past.
The Canadian fee is not published on either page. Neither is the eligibility test. That is not an accusation, it is a gap, and it means a Canadian reader cannot do the arithmetic in the table above without asking Panorama first. Ask before you plan around it.
What do you take on when you assign your own codes?
A register. The standard requires reference metadata to be stored alongside every ISRC, and treats codes without it as not fully compliant.
| The duty | What it means in practice | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Keep the reference metadata | Title, version title, main artist, duration, content type and date of first publication, stored against every code | Annex E |
| Assign sequentially | Work up through your allocated range rather than picking numbers you like | 3.3.4 |
| Never re-use a number inside one year | The year of reference refreshes the space; re-using inside it creates a duplicate | 3.3.4 |
| Assign at the right moment | Once the creative work is finished and a release decision is taken | 4.4 |
| Tell the buyer | Sell or license the recording and you must pass on its existing code | 4.6 |
| Ask before you run out | A range that is nearly spent is a request to your agency, not an improvisation | 3.3.4 |
The US agency puts the whole duty in one sentence on its guidance page: “Once ISRCs have been created for your recordings, you are responsible for maintaining a record or list of them.” Nobody audits this. No agency writes to ask which numbers you have spent. The register exists because the day you need it — a duplicate, a catalogue sale, a statement that does not add up — is a day you will not be able to reconstruct it.
This is the honest cost of route one, and it is not the $95. It is a spreadsheet that has to survive your next four laptops. The catalogue audit checklist is what that register looks like when somebody keeps it properly.
Is the code your distributor gave you actually yours?
Yes. The code stays with the recording through a sale or a licence, and an ISRC Manager must supply the details of every code it assigns to the owner of the recording.
The Handbook’s annex on ISRC Managers is unambiguous about the hand-over:
Once assigned, the details of assigned ISRCs shall be provided by the ISRC Manager to the owner of the recording who shall use the assigned ISRC to identify the recording in all circumstances thereafter.
And the prefix at the front was never a claim on anything. The standard says so directly, in the clause that explains how to read a code at all: the characters of the prefix “cannot be assumed to identify a current rights owner as the recording may have changed hands since code allocation or the code may have been assigned by a third party.” Leaving your distributor does not strip your codes. Selling the catalogue does not change them. A code once assigned outlives every relationship that produced it.
What you do not get is the prefix, or sight of the register behind it. You cannot assign the next code, you cannot see which designation numbers have been spent, and every recording delivered that way is stamped with a five-character mark that says, to anyone reading it, that somebody else did the paperwork. Every kilogram on earth was once defined by a single cylinder in a vault outside Paris. You can weigh what you like; you are not the vault.
When is your distributor’s code the right answer?
When you release rarely enough that a prefix never pays for itself, and you are content for those recordings to be identified under somebody else’s prefix.
That is a real answer and most of this audience is living it. The route is written into the standard, the appointed managers are listed in public, and nothing in the Handbook makes a code worth less for having been assigned by one. Anyone telling you a free code is a trap is selling something, and it is usually codes.
What it costs is smaller and slower than a trap. Your catalogue ends up in eras — one prefix for the years you were with one distributor, another for the years after — and the register of what got assigned when sits in a dashboard you stop having access to on the day you leave. Nothing breaks. It is just never quite yours to answer for.
And two codes for one recording, which is the failure this actually leads to, starts here more often than anywhere else: switch distributors, leave the box blank a second time, and the new one assigns a fresh code out of its own prefix. Two ISRCs on one recording is the repair. The prevention is one field, filled in.
So: decide the route before the next delivery rather than during it. Supply the code with the recording every time, from whichever prefix you settled on. And write it down the day it is assigned — which version gets which code is the decision that comes immediately after this one, and both of them are worthless if the answer only ever lived in an upload form.
FAQ
Can I get an ISRC for free?
Yes. A distributor or other appointed ISRC Manager assigns one at no charge when the field is left blank at upload, and the code is valid. It comes out of their prefix rather than one of your own.
Does an ISRC expire or need renewing?
No. The US ISRC Agency’s prefix fee is one-time with no additional costs, and the code itself stays with the recording — the standard requires the same ISRC to continue after the recording is sold or licensed on.
Is assigning an ISRC the same as registering copyright?
No. The ISRC Handbook says the two should not be confused: copyright registration is a separate process in the territories that offer it, and assigning a code brings none of its benefits.
Do I need the ISRC before the recording is finished?
Assign it once the creative work is done and a release decision has been taken. Assigning provisionally in anticipation of a final mix is permitted, and only becomes secure once that mix exists.
Sources
- IFPI, ISRC Handbook, 4th Edition (2021) — who may assign (A.5), ISRC Managers and the four terms they operate under (Annex D), the prefix and the designation range (3.3.2, 3.3.4), the reference metadata every Registrant must keep (4.7, Annex E), when to assign (4.4), the code’s survival of a sale (4.6), and the fact that assignment is not copyright registration (4.5). Clause codes in the tables link to their page in the PDF.
- International ISRC Agency, ISRC Managers — what an ISRC Manager is, that they are allocated prefixes set aside for clients’ recordings, and the public list of who has been appointed, by agency.
- International ISRC Agency, Assign ISRC online — the buy-a-code route, its five steps and its pricing in credits.
- US ISRC Agency (RIAA), usisrc.org — the one-time $95 administrative fee for a Rights Owner Prefix, and no additional costs after it.
- US ISRC Agency (RIAA), About ISRC — what a Rights Owner Prefix permits, up to 100,000 ISRCs a year.
- US ISRC Agency (RIAA), Guidance and support — the registrant’s record-keeping duty, in the agency’s own words.
- CONNECT Music Licensing, ISRC — the handover of the Canadian application to Panorama, and the CB/CA country-code split dated to 1 June 2021.
- Panorama (formerly SOPROQ), Code ISRC — the current Canadian application route and the prefix shape.
Prices are quoted from each agency’s own pages in their own currencies and were current on the date at the top of this piece; fees and application routes change. The Canadian fee and the US Code Pack price are not published on any public page, so neither appears here. This is not legal advice.
Keeping the register
The ISRC sits on the track beside the version, the recording type and the ISWC in CatalogTracker, search reads the identifiers directly — type a code and the result says which identifier matched — and every change is kept with who made it and what it was before. It does not issue codes and it does not know which designation numbers you have spent; that ledger stays yours to keep. In development for iPhone.