4.1 Terms and definitions

For the purposes of all parts of the ERN standard the following terms have the definitions specified in this clause.

Although all the terms below are capitalised, they appear in the text of all the parts of the ERN standard in lower case, for ease of readability. This does not apply in this part of the ERN standard to Album Release, Clip Release and Track Release because these are combined terms that would not appear in a normal dictionary.

Album Release

A release that is a physical album of an extended duration and/or the digital equivalent of a physical sound carrier of an extended duration. An Album Release typically contains multiple sound recordings and/or videos and may also include bonus resources.

Clip Release

A release, communicated in a NewReleaseMessage that contains one sound recording or video of type Clip. The type Clip indicates that a release is an excerpt taken from a “host” sound recording or video and is being made available, in the form of a release, known as the Clip Release, to consumers.

Contractually Mandatory

A tag or attribute in any DDEX message that has the technical cardinality of 0-1 or 0-n but, because it has been agreed between the message sender and the message recipient (by contract or by law), is mandatory when the message is sent in a specific commercial context.

Deal

An agreement entered into by two or more parties.

In the context of this part of the ERN standard those are usually a record company or a distributor, and a DSP, and the deal sets out the terms under which the DSP may make available to consumers releases containing sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources the copyright of which is owned by the record company or the distributor and/or of which the record company or distributor is the exclusive licensee.

Digital service provider (DSP)

A party that provides a service which makes available to consumers releases over a public telecom network having been duly authorised to do so by the owners of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources, and/or exclusive licensors of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources (usually record companies or distributors).

Distributor

An organisation responsible for delivering releases and associated deal information to DSPs on behalf of one or more record companies, who are the owners of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources, and/or exclusive licensees of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources contained in the releases and/or an organisation that sends or receives DDEX standard messages on behalf of other companies both of which roles enable smaller organisations to participate in the DDEX ecosystem.

Main Release

A release communicated in a NewReleaseMessage (see Table 1 in Clause 5) that represents the main purpose for sending the NewReleaseMessage. When communicating an album release, the main release would be represented by that album. A typical NewReleaseMessage contains, besides the main release, one or more Track Releases.

Product

A manifestation of a release (or resource) which is made available to consumers, by sale, loan or other means. The attributes of a release in its digital manifestation as a product may be technical (e.g. the codec or bit rate), a mode of distribution (e.g. downloading or streaming) or a commercial term (e.g. price).

Record Company

An organisation which is the owner of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources and/or the exclusive licensor of copyrights in sound recordings, videos or other releases or resources.

Release

A release is an abstract entity representing a bundle of one or more resources usually compiled by a record company. The resources in releases are normally primarily sound recordings or videos, but this is not invariably the case. The release is not itself the item of trade or product. Products have more extensive attributes than releases. For example, one release may be disseminated in many different products.

Resource

A digital fixation of an expression of an abstract work (such as a sound recording, a video, other audio-visual recordings, an image, software or a passage of text). Resources are individual assets that make up a release. Typical resources are sound recordings, videos or cover art images.

Track Release

A release, communicated in a NewReleaseMessage that does not represent the main purpose for sending the NewReleaseMessage. For example, when communicating a ten-track album, a typical NewReleaseMessage would contain, besides the main release, ten Track Releases (i.e. one for each sound recording that together make up the Album Release).

Video

An audio-visual resource which may or may not include music.