The Alliance for Change in Ghana Music (AFGHAM), a group of Ghanaian musicians who have come together to help fellow musicians enjoy their copyrights in royalties recently shed light on the International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) in a tweet by its interim Chairman — Mark Darlington Osae.
The July 2020 tweet which forms part of AFGHAM’s ‘Music Minds Campaign‘ also contains a video breakdown of the ISRC system that is aimed at making musicians uniquely identify their sound recordings and music videos globally and anywhere online and on radio etc.
The coding system which operates like the science of fingerprint system gives the music uploaded a unique code that is solely for the creator of the content. “This is your personal musical DNA code which no one can take away from you as a creator,” AFGHAM interim explained to TheAfricanDream.net in an interview.
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The digital fingerprint contains four parts which must be carefully entered by the creator to avoid the mistake of giving a wrong identity. These parts are the Country code, First registrants code, Year of reference, and Track designation code.
A successful generation of the code becomes synonymous with the DNA of the song which uniquely identifies the creator whom all revenues accrued from streaming and sales go to.
“A mistake however in this arrangement might end up getting the copyright to another person who will get to reap all the benefits from it,” cautioned award-winning Ghanaian musician Trigmatic who is also an AFGHAM member in a chat with TheAfricanDream.net where he also said that “We started ‘Music Minds Campaign’ as part of our initiative to help explain and educate musicians, creators and the public about some of the nuances of the music industry and how digitization is modernizing it“
The ISRC is independent of any particular music streaming platform. It is generated uniquely after which songs can be uploaded on any music streaming platform.
AFGHAM is encouraging Ghanaian and African musicians worldwide to pay keen attention not only to the creative aspect of their art but be business savvy too as it will help a lot in securing a financially successful future when they reach retirement or unfortunate occurrences like the COVID-19 pandemic stops them from going out for shows.
For more information and news from AFGHAM visit their official website at afcghana.org.
(Source: TheAfricanDream.net)