ISRC lookup: what a song’s ISRC tells you

An ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) identifies one specific recording. Every track on every store has one, and it stays the same when the song moves to another distributor.

The format

An ISRC has 12 characters, often written with hyphens: US-CM5-16-00028.

Part	Example	Meaning
Country code	US	The country of the agency that issued the registrant code. The US also issues codes starting with QM, QZ and QT.
Registrant code	CM5	The company or person who issued the ISRC.
Year	16	The year the code was assigned, not always the release year.
Designation	00028	The registrant’s own number for the recording.

How to find a song’s ISRC

• Pulse: paste the Spotify or TikTok link and the ISRC is in the result.
• Your distributor’s dashboard: for your own releases, the ISRC is listed on each track.
• The IFPI ISRC search: isrcsearch.ifpi.org lets you search by artist and title.

What the registrant code tells you

Self-serve distributors usually issue ISRCs for their artists, so their releases share a small set of registrant codes. Labels with their own codes issue ISRCs themselves. The registrant code therefore points either to the distributor or to the label, which makes it one of the better clues to who released a song. See how to find a song’s distributor.

One song, several ISRCs

A remix, a sped-up version, a radio edit and a live version are different recordings, so each has its own ISRC. Re-uploads of the same recording by someone else may also carry a different code. Pulse groups these with the original when it matches TikTok sounds to a song.