The International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN) was created by the industry to address the complexities of the digital shift. It serves as a unique, voluntary, and international identifier that offers significant advantages across the entire value chain:
- End-to-End Tracking: ISAN allows you to track productions seamlessly from development and production through to distribution and final viewing. In a global marketplace with millions of works and fragmented distribution channels, it ensures your content remains identifiable at every stage.
- Simplified Data Management & Automation: By ensuring data accuracy at every level of granularity, ISAN simplifies database searches, facilitates data exchange, and eliminates language barriers. It acts as a key to automation, allowing stakeholders to connect their information systems directly to the ISAN Registry via REST API for efficient, automated transactions.
- Royalty Collection & Financial Administration: A growing number of collecting societies worldwide use ISAN to process royalties. In several jurisdictions, including France, Spain, and Belgium, it is mandatory for releasing payments. ISAN streamlines sales forecasting, payment processing, and consolidated audience reporting.
- Enhanced Content Protection: While not an anti-counterfeiting tool itself, ISAN provides the certainty needed for protection systems to function. It is integrated into Blu-ray copy protection systems, and complies with major digital fingerprinting and watermarking standards. For example ISAN helps French content owners to monitor - with the help of the local anti-piracy association - illegal uploads on platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion and Facebook.
- Efficient Catalogue Management: Production companies utilize ISAN to manage complex libraries, distinguishing between various distribution versions of the same work. It eliminates uncertainty when multiple works share similar titles or characteristics, ensuring the right version is always identified.
- Global Interoperability: As a standard with a central global registry, ISAN removes ambiguity in international trade, reducing transaction costs and ensuring that all stakeholders—from creators to platforms—are referring to the exact same asset.