KLIF’s Notes

The ISRC

Over the past several years, I have really pushed the ISRC and actually require it in order to be considered for airplay. There are two reasons for this. One is for the benefit or the Independent Artists supported by BWNR; the second is because it is required by the United States Copyright Royalties Board. Before I get into the ISRC, here is a few facts regarding music & radio in the United States.

Copyright Royalties Board

The board is three judges at this time in broadcast history that, with multiple changes, was created way back in 1928. It was straight forward and was the result of all those musicians and singers who were hired by radio stations for those shows your grandparents and great-grandparents(and for some your parents} listened to every week. This was followed by the birth of the Broadcast Music Institute(BMI) in 1939. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers(ASCAP) was actually formed before that in 1914.

Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA)

Before streaming reports, there was the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) which is also very important even today. I like to reference WKRP In Cincinnati to explain them. If you have watched the show(if you haven’t I recommend you do), after Dr. Johnny Fever starts a song, you will see him grab a clipboard and write on it. That was RIAA data(songs played) & to confirm commercials aired. These were called RIAA logs. The songs played went to RIAA, who used them for many reasons, including certification of Gold & Platinum records but not performances because OTA Radio did not have to under FCC rules of the time(and still do not have to). Today’s commercial broadcast software has that report built-in.

The Birth of the ISRC

Now to the point of this KLIF’s Note. This is actually a AI generated description:

The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) was first introduced in 1986. The recording industry and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed the code to identify and track music recordings. 

When was the ISRC created?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the ISO collaborated to create the ISRC 

• The ISO codified the ISRC as ISO 3901 in 1986 
• The ISRC was updated in 2001 
• The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) was designated as the registration authority for ISRCs 

What is the ISRC used for?

• ISRC codes are used to track the use of recordings on radio, television, ONLINE STREAMING SERVICES, and physical media 
• ISRC codes help radio stations generate accurate performance data and royalty payments for airplay 
• ISRC codes are used to facilitate accurate royalty payments 
• The first owner of the recording or music video usually assigns the ISRC. 

When this code is created, it includes more information than you think. It contains the same information I ask for when you submit. It’s also why I use MP3s – WAV files do not have the ability to save that data. MP3 was modified to allow the embedding of all this information when MPEG was introduced.

• Title
• Artist
• Album
• Label
• ISRC

How BWNR Uses ISRC

The BandWagon Radio Network is a licensed internet only radio station. Because of that, our software is designed by Radio Computing Services(RCS) who is sub-company of iHeartMedia.

I worked for them right before I started BWNR first from August 1999 until May 2004, when it was called Prophet Systems Innovation and again from December 2010 until April 2014 – the year BandWagon was born. In 2001, over-the-air radio stations joined the live streaming world. Then only the Artist and Song Title were seen online.

When I air a song, it goes to a small piece of software called an encoder from the playout software. The encoder reads the metadata and picks up the audio and sends it to a Securenet/Cirrus computer that sends it to you and you see everything about the song when you listen to it. But something else goes on with the ISRC when it leaves my home studio and goes to my host. They collect and store the information I mentioned above. Each week I download that file to create The BandWagon Network Radio Charts. But each month I send that report to Soundexchange so that the artists can get paid performance royalties.

Here’s the last reason. In the age of digital streaming, there are companies out there who do nothing more than “listen for spins” of your work. Some of these companies are designed to “listen: for the ISRC. This is mind blowing here. When it encounters a “new” ISRC, it adds it to it’s database and then keeps looking and counting. Just about EVERY mainstream charts, and RIAA, rely on them and another one I know about because we are there, Digital Radio Tracker provides these reports to Billboard and others.

And Finally..the end

I have been very diligent in trying to understand the recording industry since it changed so fast in the past two decades. I saw it from the beginning as far as Clear Channel was concerned because it was my job to get over 12,000 radio stations on the internet. Since I created BWNR, and the way we do things, there have been artists who have gotten Grammy nominations & on big charts because we help get you spins counted. We are tracked live by over 100 tracking systems. To put that in perspective, if you get 2 plays per day, they are actually getting 200 captures of that data. That’s why my wife Angie and I invested in this $5000 commercial broadcast software – to do it right; to get you paid and to get you heard.