Apple Music Encourages International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) Metadata Submissions by Rights Owners

Apple Music encourages International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) metadata submissions by rights owners.

Apple Music has sent word to its label partners and music sector organizations that the company is encouraging the submissions of International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) metadata by rights owners as part of its standard workflow procedure. The announcement is excellent news for creators and music industry organizations by helping to ensure that musicians, contributors, record labels, and their music will be unambiguously attributed — while making it easier for Apple Music listeners to find that content than before.

Apple’s move toward using international, standard name identifiers will improve listeners’ search experience while facilitating discovery online and improving digital workflows for copyright, rights, and royalties management.

“After several years partnering with Apple Music, we are pleased and excited by this extension of the use of ISNI into Apple Partners’ workflows,” says ISNI International Agency’s Executive Director, Tim Devenport. “Leveraging ISNI’s capabilities as a bridging identifier — alongside Apple ID and other international standards — should further streamline the information exchanges underlying digital discovery to the benefit of creators and consumers alike.”

ISNI is the global standard number for identifying the millions of contributors to creative works and those involved in their distribution, such as researchers, inventors, writers, artists, visual creators, performers, producers, publishers, and more.

Certified as ISO (International Standardization Organization) 22729, it is part of a family of international standard identifiers that includes works and rights holders in all categories, including DOI, ISAN, ISBN, ISRC, ISSN, and ISWC. ISNIs can also act as a bridge to link several instances of identification, enabling “cross-walks” and correlation between different platforms.

ISNI’s goal is to assign to the names or personas of individuals and organizations involved in their production or distribution a persistent and unique identifying number, resolving the issue of name ambiguity in online search and discovery. Each assigned ISNI across all platforms on the global supply chain can therefore be unambiguously attributed to its creators wherever that work is described.