International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC) is a unique identifier for musical works, similar to ISBN for books. It is adopted as international standard ISO 15707. The ISO subcommittee with responsibility for the standard is TC 46/SC 9.

Format

Each code is composed of three parts: # prefix element (1 character) # work identifier (9 digits) # check digit (1 digit) Currently, the only prefix defined is "T", indicating Musical works. However, additional prefixes may be defined in the future to expand the available range of identifiers and/or expand the system to additional types of works.

Computation of the check digit

With *

d_i

: one of the nine digits of the work identifier (i=1 to 9) from left to right. *

C

: check digit.

S = 1 + \sum_^id_i

C = (10 - (S \mod 10)) \mod 10

Example: T-034.524.680-C

S=179

C=1

ISWC identifiers are commonly written the form ''T-123.456.789-C''. The grouping is for ease of reading only; the numbers do not incorporate any information about the work's region, author, publisher, etc. Rather, they are simply issued in sequence. These separators are not required, and no other separators are allowed. The first ISWC was assigned in 1995, for the song "

Dancing Queen "Dancing Queen" is a Europop and disco song by the Swedish group ABBA, released as the lead single from their fourth studio album, ''Arrival'' (1976). It was written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson. Andersson and Ulvaeus al ...

" by ABBA; the code is T-000.000.001-0.

Usage

To register an ISWC, the following minimal information must be supplied: * title * names of all composers, arrangers and authors, with their role in the piece (identified by role code) and their

CAE CAE may refer to: Organisations Aviation * CAE Aviation, a Luxembourgian aviation services company * CAE Inc. (formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics), a Canadian manufacturer of simulation technologies and training provider * Régional Compagnie A ...

IPI The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the U ...

number * work classification code (CIS) * identification of other works it is a derivative of Note: an ISWC identifies works, not recordings. ISRC can be used to identify recordings. Nor does it identify individual publications (e.g. issues of a recording on physical media, sheet music, broadcast at a particular frequency/modulation/time/location...) Its primary purpose is in

collecting society Copyrights can either be licensed or assigned by the owner of the copyright. A copyright collective (also known as a copyright society, copyright collecting agency, licensing agency or copyright collecting society or collective management organiz ...

administration, and to clearly identify works in legal contracts. It would also be useful in library cataloguing.

Due to the fact that a musical work can have multiple authors, it is inevitable that, on rare occasions, a duplicate ISWC might exist and might not be detected immediately. Because of the existing business practices among collecting societies, it is not possible to simply declare an ISWC as obsolete. In such cases, as soon as they are identified, the system will deal with duplicate registrations by linking such registration records in the ISWC database and its related products.http://www.collectionscanada.ca/iso/tc46sc9/docs/sc9n298.pdf

References

New ISO standard for worldwide identification of musical works/key

External links