A sound recording is a physical or digital creation of a specific musical performance. Typically, in the music industry this term is sometimes swapped out for masters or master recordings. Commercially released sound recordings will get an ISRC code which is the unique identifier to that specific recording. The ISRC is useful for tracking uses and paying royalties, which is why AllTrack allows you to link multiple ISRCs to your registered compositions in our portal!

As detailed in our composition definition, a song is made up of two parts: the sound recording (or master) and the composition (or work). The composition is the IP or copyrighted material of a song, which is the melody and lyrics. A sound recording is the copyrighted sounds related to a specific composition.