How to Find the ISWC Code of a Song (ISWC Finder, Lookup, and What to Do If It Is Missing)

Renato Horvath
9 minutes

An ISWC is not something you request, and it is not something you can buy. It is assigned by your collecting society when you register a musical work, and once it exists you can find it in your society's member portal, in a public repertoire search if your society runs one, and on ISWC-Net, the free global database run by CISAC. If none of those returns anything, your song does not have an ISWC yet. That is a registration problem, not a search problem, and it usually means the publishing side of that song has been earning money with nowhere to send it.

Here is how to run the lookup properly, what each tool can and cannot do, and what to do when the search comes back empty.

What an ISWC looks like

The International Standard Musical Work Code has the format T-123.456.789-C: the letter T, nine digits, and a check digit. You will also see it written without the dots. Every musical work gets exactly one, it never changes, and it stays with the composition no matter how many recordings, covers or remixes are made of it. The very first one, T-000.000.001-0, was assigned in 1995 to ABBA's Dancing Queen, and as Henry Marsden showed when he traced that code through several society databases, even the most famous ISWC in the world has picked up duplicate registrations along the way. CISAC counts more than 52 million unique works with an ISWC today.

If the code you are holding starts with a country code and has twelve characters, for example GB-ABC-26-00001, that is an ISRC, which identifies a recording rather than the song itself. The two get mixed up constantly, and the confusion costs money. We laid out the full difference in ISWC vs ISRC: which code pays you.

ISWC finder: the three places to look

1. Your society's member portal

If you registered the work yourself, start here. Log in, open your list of works, and the ISWC appears next to each registered title once it has been allocated. If a work shows only your society's own work number and no ISWC, the registration is still being processed or something in it is blocking allocation, which we get to below. Allocation normally takes days to a few weeks after a complete registration.

2. A society's public repertoire search (where one exists)

Some European societies publish a free repertoire search that does not require membership. GEMA, SACEM, SGAE and SIAE all do. Search by work title or writer name. Because societies exchange registration data with each other, you can often find works registered abroad in these databases too. This is the fastest way to check how a co-writer's society has registered a song you share, and whether your name is spelled the same way there as it is at home.

Not every society offers this. PRS for Music, Artisjus, BumaStemra and STIM keep their work databases behind a login or an access request. If yours does, use your member portal for your own works, and fall back to ISWC-Net for everything else.

3. ISWC-Net

ISWC-Net at iswcnet.cisac.org is the global public register, run by CISAC, free and without an account. It searches four ways: by ISWC, by a society's work code, by title plus creator, or by creator name alone. One search at a time. A result shows the preferred ISWC, the title and any alternative titles, the creators with their IPI name numbers, and performers where known.

Two things it does not do. It does not search by ISRC, so you cannot paste a code from Spotify and get the work back. And it only knows what societies have sent it: a work that was never registered anywhere is simply not there.

Search tips that save time: try the title without brackets or version tags, try your surname on its own, and try the spelling of your name both with and without diacritics. Registration data is only as consistent as the people who typed it in.

What about Spotify, Apple Music or your distributor?

Streaming services and distributor dashboards show ISRCs, not ISWCs. A few third-party tools offer an ISRC to ISWC lookup; most of them are built on data published by the US Mechanical Licensing Collective, which is useful for a quick check but incomplete for European repertoire and not authoritative for anything you would put on a form. Treat those results as a hint, then verify against your society or ISWC-Net.

Why your song has no ISWC yet

If all three searches come back empty, one of three things has happened.

The work was never registered. This is the most common case among self-releasing artists. Uploading to a distributor covers the recording side of your income and assigns ISRCs automatically. It does nothing on the composition side. Without a society registration there is no ISWC, and the publishing royalties from every stream accrue unmatched. We walked through that split in how songwriters get paid from Spotify.

Not every writer is identified. An ISWC is only allocated once all creators of the work have been uniquely identified, which in practice means each of them needs an IPI number and a clear share. One co-writer who is not a society member anywhere, or whose split is still under discussion, blocks the code for everyone. This is getting harder, not easier. An iMusician analysis of UK Official Chart hits found that a Top 100 single in the 1970s had on average 1.7 credited writers; today it takes around 4.5. Samples and interpolations that add the original writers to the credits are part of that rise. More names means more ways for a registration to stall. If your co-writer has no IPI, point them to what an IPI number is and how to get one for free.

The registration exists but under a different title or as a duplicate. "Song Title (Radio Edit)" registered by you and "Song Title" registered by your co-writer's society can produce two records instead of one. Search for every variant you or your collaborators may have used before assuming the work is missing.

How to get an ISWC assigned

The steps are the same at every European society, with small differences in the forms.

1. Join your society as a writer member if you have not already. Your IPI number is created automatically as part of this.

2. Register the work: original title and any alternative titles, every writer with their IPI, each writer's role, and splits that total exactly 100 percent.

3. If the song samples or interpolates another work, declare the source work and its writers at registration. Adding them afterwards means amending the registration at every society the work has travelled to, and every amendment is a chance for the records to diverge.

4. Wait for allocation and check your member portal. If nothing appears after a few weeks, ask your society what is blocking it; it is usually a co-writer.

Nobody needs to pay a third party to "get an ISWC". The code is free, and it comes with registration.

One song, one ISWC, many ISRCs

Once the code exists, the money still depends on a match: the royalty system has to connect the recordings people actually stream, identified by ISRC, to the work you registered, identified by ISWC. Where your society lets you attach ISRCs to a work registration, do it for every version you have released. Keep the title identical across your distributor and your society. And if you change distributors, take your existing ISRCs with you instead of letting the new one issue fresh codes, or your streaming history splits into two identities that the work has to be matched to separately.

When the code exists but the money does not

Finding your ISWC proves the work is registered. It does not prove you are being paid for it. If the code is there and your statements are thin, the royalties may be sitting in unmatched pools at societies in other countries, waiting for someone to claim them before their deadlines pass. The scale is not small: this summer a UK court accepted that unidentified royalties at PRS for Music alone amounted to around £200 million over the period in dispute. Our guide to unclaimed music royalties in Europe covers where to search and how to claim.

In our survey of independent artists, one in four named the rights section as the part of releasing music they understand least. The ISWC lookup is a good place to start: five minutes on ISWC-Net tells you whether the system can see your songs at all.

Is ISWC-Net free to use?

Yes. The public search at iswcnet.cisac.org is free and does not require an account. Only the bulk and API services behind it are restricted to societies, publishers and labels.

Can I find an ISWC by ISRC?

Not on ISWC-Net, which searches by ISWC, work code, title and creator only. Some third-party tools map ISRCs to ISWCs using US data; use them as a hint and verify with your society.

Can I search ISWC-Net by my name alone?

Yes. Creator-only search is supported and is often the quickest way to see every registered work linked to your IPI, including ones registered by co-writers or their societies.

Do cover versions get a new ISWC?

No. A cover is a new recording of the same work, so it gets a new ISRC and keeps the original ISWC. A remix or interpolation that adds new writing is a new work and needs its own ISWC, with the original writers credited on it.

What if two ISWCs exist for the same song?

Duplicates happen when the same work is registered under different titles or writer spellings. Report it to your society; they can merge the records so that royalties stop splitting between two identities.

How long does it take to get an ISWC?

Days to a few weeks after a complete registration. Delays almost always mean a writer on the work is not yet identified with an IPI or the splits do not add up.

Sources and further reading

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