mcnichols Posted May 29, 2011, 3:39 pm

I'm a little confused about the correct text string for ISRC codes. Having examined a few MP3 files, some codes appear to have 'dashes' separating the different text fields (country of origin, owner, year etc) while other just have a continuous string of 12 characters. Which is correct please, or does it not make any difference?

jamesrae Posted May 30, 2011, 12:27 pm

We have adhered to the ID3 ISO standard which states that the 'ISRC' frame should contain the International Standard Recording Code as 12 characters. This means no dashes can be used and although longer codes can be read only 12 will be written. As far as we could infer from the ISRC handbook, the dashes are for ease of reading only. The ISRC handbook is available at: http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_resources/isrc.html