CISAC to upgrade international music code

CISAC was first to the music identifier, developing a tool that connected a music product with its maker in the 1990s. The first song to be assigned an ISWC was Abba's 'Dancing Queen' in 1995.

By 2002, the ISWC had become the standard tool in the music industry and was certified by the International Organisation for Standardisation. Since then, the codes have assisted collective management organisations in collecting royalties, particularly from the digital space.

"The benefit of the ISWC is that it can function as an international passport for the work that it identifies," ISO said at the time. "It allows information on the use of musical works to be tracked, reported and exchanged more efficiently."

Such globally recognised digital platforms as Spotify and Apple deploy the ISWC in the distribution of royalties, which exceeded €1bn in 2017.

The complexity of collection, distribution and data management that accompanied that income has led the ISWC through several improvements over the years. The last upgrade, in 2018, was done in collaboration with the France-based firm FastTrack.

“Investing in improved ISWC systems will immensely help music creators and publishers, authors societies and digital services navigate their way better in the rapidly growing digital music market,” said CISAC director general Gadi Oron, whose establishment has now collaborated with Spanish Point Technologies, a firm based in Ireland, for another upgrade.

“This next generation ISWC system will help societies manage the marked increase of music streaming services and provide greater data accuracy,” Spanish Point Technologies CEO Donal Cullen said.

“Using modern cloud technologies and our innovative matching engine, the improved ISWC systems will assist societies in exchanging information with each other and music users, such as digital service providers and publishers. This will encourage greater use of the ISWC and should lead to more creators’ works being accurately identified and paid for.”

“Our project with Spanish Point aims to increase the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the system in a way that is complimentary with our members’ systems, and which keeps pace with the explosive growth of music streaming,” Oron said.