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Reference

ISRC registrant codes,
decoded

The three characters in the middle of every ISRC identify who issued it. There's no official public list of them, and this page explains what exists instead: how the block is allocated, the prefixes you'll meet constantly, and how to read any code.

By Christiaan Maks, Founder & DeveloperUpdated

Where it sits

The registrant block in context

Take US-RC1-24-00001. The registrant is the second field: three letters or digits allocated to one label, distributor, or self-releasing artist by an ISRC agency.

US-
Country
Where the code was registered, assigned by a national agency.
RC1-
Registrant
The three characters this page is about: who issued the code.
24-
Year
Two digits for the year of assignment.
00001
Designation
The registrant's own number for this recording.
The missing list

Why you can't find an official registrant list

Registrant codes are allocated by national ISRC agencies (usisrc.org in the United States) and the International ISRC Registration Authority, and their registries are simply not published.

There are tens of thousands of registrants, the codes are only unique within their country, and allocations keep growing, so no authoritative public table exists to link to. What exists in practice is decoding: any ISRC splits cleanly into its four parts, the recording itself can be looked up in a catalog, and a small set of major-label and distributor prefixes covers a large share of the commercial releases you'll actually encounter. That is what the rest of this page gives you.

Field guide

Prefixes you'll see constantly

Observed patterns from working with a 90M+ track catalog, not official allocations: registries aren't public, so treat these as the field guide, not the law.

USUM7Commonly seen on Universal Music Group releases registered in the United States. One of the most frequent prefixes in any commercial catalog.
USSM1Commonly seen on Sony Music releases registered in the United States, across its labels and imprints.
USAT2Commonly seen on Atlantic Records releases (Warner Music family) registered in the United States.
GBUM7Commonly seen on Universal Music releases registered in the United Kingdom.
GBAYECommonly seen on EMI and Parlophone catalog registered in the United Kingdom, including much of the classic British catalog.
QM / QZ / QT + anythingNot registrants but extra country allocations for the United States, issued when US registrant combinations ran low. The three characters after them are registrants like any other, heavily used by independent distributors such as DistroKid and CD Baby.
TC + anythingCommonly seen on TuneCore-distributed releases. Like QM and QZ, the interesting part is that a distributor mints codes for thousands of unrelated artists under its own registrant allocation.
Reading it right

Four things the registrant code does not tell you

Registrant is the issuer, not the current owner

Catalogs get bought and sold, but the ISRC never changes. A prefix tells you who registered the recording at release, which may be two acquisitions ago. Treat it as provenance, not as a rights-holder lookup.

The same three characters mean different things per country

Registrant codes are only unique within their country prefix. AB1 registered under US and AB1 registered under DE are unrelated companies. Always read the five-character country + registrant block together.

One registrant can cover thousands of artists

Distributors mint every client's codes under their own registrant. Seeing the same prefix on two tracks means the same issuer, not the same label, artist, or rights holder.

The country is the registrant's, not the artist's

A Dutch artist releasing through a US distributor gets a US (or QZ) code. Nationality, recording location, and release market are all invisible to the prefix.

Have a code in front of you?

The free validator decodes any ISRC into its four parts and names the country, including the QM/QZ/TC special cases. The lookup goes one step further and shows you the recording, artist, and label behind the code.

Decode with the validatorLook up the recording
FAQ

Registrant code questions

No. Registrant codes are allocated by national ISRC agencies (and by the International ISRC Registration Authority for the special ranges), and those registries are not published as a public master list. That is why searching for one turns up nothing authoritative: the list you're looking for genuinely does not exist in public form. What you can do is decode a specific code's structure and recognise the handful of prefixes that dominate commercial catalogs.
Decode it, then look the recording up. The country and registrant block narrows the issuer; pasting the code into the free ISRC lookup on this site shows the recording it identifies, with its label and release, which in practice answers the question. The ISRC validator on this site decodes the four parts for you automatically.
Apply to the ISRC agency for your country: usisrc.org (run by the RIAA) in the United States, or your national agency elsewhere; the International ISRC Registration Authority handles countries without one. Once allocated, you assign codes to your own recordings under that prefix and keep a register of what each designation refers to. If you just need codes for a release, your distributor assigns them free and this step is unnecessary.
QM, QT, and QZ are additional allocations made for the United States when its registrant combinations started running out. Independent distributors registered many of their registrant codes under these newer prefixes, so codes minted by services like DistroKid and CD Baby very often carry them. The code is exactly as valid as one starting with US.
Only within their country prefix. The three-character registrant block repeats across countries, so the meaningful unit is the first five characters together: country plus registrant. Two codes sharing just the middle three characters have nothing to do with each other.
No, and this is the most common misreading. It tells you who registered the code when the recording was released. Catalogs change hands constantly and ISRCs are permanent, so the prefix reflects history, not current ownership. For rights questions, you need the release's current label information, not the code's prefix.

Decoding ISRCs programmatically?

The SonoVault API resolves any ISRC to its canonical recording, with artist, label, release date, and cross-platform IDs, across 90M+ tracks. One API key, free tier included.

ISRC lookup for developersView the API docs →