<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><!DOCTYPE article  PUBLIC '-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN'  'http://www.docbook.org/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd'><article><articleinfo><title>ISO 3901</title><revhistory><revision><revnumber>4</revnumber><date>2012-10-08 22:15:39</date><authorinitials>localhost</authorinitials><revremark>converted to 1.6 markup</revremark></revision><revision><revnumber>3</revnumber><date>2006-12-21 05:42:51</date><authorinitials>DanONeill</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>2</revnumber><date>2006-12-21 05:37:11</date><authorinitials>DanONeill</authorinitials></revision><revision><revnumber>1</revnumber><date>2006-12-21 05:36:42</date><authorinitials>DanONeill</authorinitials></revision></revhistory></articleinfo><section><title>ISRC made easy</title><para>International Standard Recording Code (ISRC), or ISO 3901 as its formal name is, is the recording industries answer to ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers). Every recording, re-recording, remix and remastering is assigned a unique ISRC of their own. As an example of one of ISRC's uses the ISRC code is encoded in the Q-channel on every CD, right next to the actual recording. </para><para>The ISRC itself is 12 character long and contains information about where and when the recording was made and who owns it. The only characters allowed is 0-9 and A-Z. The ISRC is constructed in the following way: </para><informaltable><tgroup cols="2"><colspec colname="col_0"/><colspec colname="col_1"/><tbody><row rowsep="1"><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para><emphasis role="strong">Characters</emphasis></para></entry><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para><emphasis role="strong">Content</emphasis></para></entry></row><row rowsep="1"><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>2</para></entry><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>Country according to the <ulink url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2">ISO 3166-1 alpha-2</ulink> country codes.</para></entry></row><row rowsep="1"><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>3</para></entry><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>First owner. An alfanumerical value unique for every record company</para></entry></row><row rowsep="1"><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>2</para></entry><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>Last two digits of the year of the recording.</para></entry></row><row rowsep="1"><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>5</para></entry><entry colsep="1" rowsep="1"><para>Designation code. A numerical value assigned by the 'first owner'.</para></entry></row></tbody></tgroup></informaltable><para> An ISRC might look like this: <emphasis role="strong">GBX459800112</emphasis> </para></section></article>