If there is a change in the ownership of a recording, the ISRC should not be changed.

ISRC identifies the recording rather than other factors such as ownership at a given point in time. Recordings retain their assigned ISRCs despite changes in rights ownership.

No elements of an ISRC should be used to infer the rights status of the recording to which the ISRC is assigned.

Since rights ownership often changes due to licensing or acquisition, ownership data of recordings should be held in databases together with ISRCs, allowing updates when necessary. ISRC can then be used to look up information about the identified recording.