An ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is a 12-character code that identifies one specific recording, not the song as written but that particular recorded version, so its streams, sales and plays can be counted and paid to the right owner.
Streaming services, stores and collecting societies track recordings by ISRC, not by title, so a missing or wrong code can send royalties to the wrong place or nowhere. The 12 characters are a five-character prefix code (two letters and three letters or numbers, once called the country code and registrant code), the two-digit year the code was assigned and a five-digit designation code.
Most independent artists get ISRCs from their distributor when they upload; labels and artists with their own registrant code assign them themselves. A remix, a remaster or a live version is a new recording and gets a new ISRC; the same recording on a single and later on an album keeps its code.
An artist releases a single, then puts the same recording on her album six months later. Her distributor asks whether the album track is new; she gives the single's existing ISRC so the streams from both releases count towards one recording.
For the acoustic version on the deluxe edition, she leaves the field empty so the distributor assigns a new code.
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