Version 4.3.1 corrects and enhances the following features:

• Removal of the AdditionalTitle composite (its functionality is better served via the MEAD standard). For communicating classical titles, two new composites, FormalTitle and GroupingTitle have been added;

• Communication of brands such as film franchises linked to a resource or release;

• Communication of the fact that a recording was made (fully or in part) by a generative AI tool;

• Communication of the fact that a contribution was made, fully or in part, by a generative AI tool;

• Communication of “traditional” and “various artists” instead of one or more named display artists or contributors;

• Changed the name of the tag Genre to DisplayGenre to better indicate its usage. Other genre information can be communicated using MEAD).

Version 4.3 adds support for:

• The communication of information about immersive and non-immersive editions of the same recordings in the same NewReleaseMessage through the introduction of a mandatory SoundRecordingEdition composite into the existing SoundRecording composite;

• Communication of standalone clips in either a ClipDetails composite or in a separate SoundRecording or Video composite as well as using the new ClipRelease composite;

• Enhanced communication of information about classical titles and contributors by adding an attribute, ApplyClassicalProfileVariant, to signal that the data for a specific sound recording conforms to the classical profile variant;

• Enhanced communication of information about instrumental and non-instrumental music by augmenting IsInstrumental by two additional tags, HasVocalPerformance and HasForegroundVocalPerformance;

• Enhanced means to classify a sound recording or video by splitting the old Type element into two tags:

  • A mandatory Type plus;

  • An optional RecordingFormat.

  The former is important for the handling of profiles whereas the latter can provide additional information about the resource being described;

• Enhanced ability to link resources by extending the RelatedResource composite to allow for the signalling of the fact that different segments of a recording are linked to another recording;

• Enhanced communication about rights claim policies by enabling such policies to be limited to specific segments within a sound recording or video; and

• Various new allowed values (such as CodecTypes to support immersive audio).

As a consequence of some of the above changes, Version 4.3 is not fully backwards compatible to the previous versions.

Version 4.2 added support for:

• Session information;

• Genre categories (i.e. genre allowed value sets in addition to free-form genre strings);

• Communication of dialects (such as American English or Swiss-German) where Version 4.1 only allowed the signalling of a language;

• The ability to communicate the names of record company personnel that the record company or distributor requests be granted access to the DSP’s systems to administer a release;

• Enhancements to the handling of different encodings of one recording and the communication of relationships between releases and resources;

• The addition of a mandatory AvsVersionId XML attribute. The AvsVersionId at publication is 3. DDEX may update the list of allowed value sets over time and this may therefore require the AvsVersionId number to be increased. When this happens, the new current AvsVersionId will be publicised on the DDEX Knowledge Base. Any such updated version of the allowed value sets which is issued on a date after the publication date of this part of the ERN standard forms part of this part of the ERN standard.

Version 4.1.1 corrected a number of small errors in the XSD:

• Ensuring that Synopsis and Keywords are available on Release and TrackRelease;

• Adding a flag to indicate whether a contributor is a credited artist;

• Aligning the ResourceRightsController and WorkRightsController composites;

• Enabling the communication of label hierarchies;

• Adding the ability to differentiate “covers” from “originals”; and

• Adding rules for the communication of preview dates.

Version 4.1 was developed in response to implementation testing of version 4 of this part of the ERN standard. It further streamlined the communication of releases from record companies or distributors to DSPs. The major changes included:

• Simplified process for communicating the reduction of rights and takedowns (Note: this approach has also been adapted for ERN-3);

• Support for accompanying a NewReleaseMessage with an additional XML file containing information in addition to what has, traditionally, been sent from a record company or distributor’s supply chain to support, for instance, voice activated music services;

• Ability for a record company or distributor to signal to a DSP how it wishes artist information to be displayed as part of a title;

• Addition of the ability to communicate display credits;

• Addition of the ability to provide track sequences using letters; and

• A series of smaller changes to closer align the NewReleaseMessage with messages defined in other DDEX standards, particularly the Recording Information Notification standard and, what at the time was called the Music Licensing Companies’ standard, now Recording Data and Rights standards.

Version 4 of the Electronic Release Notification Message Suite offered a significantly simpler way to communicate information about releases and deals compared with ERN version 3.