Quansic launches new identifier BOWI for musical works open to all parties

 

By Emmanuel Legrand

Data company Quansic, which specialises in ISNI identifiers, is hoping that the world of music will endorse its new identifier named BOWI for musical works as an alternative and a complement to ISWCs, the standard identifiers for music works. 

  BOWI, as 'Best Open Work Identifier', is meant to speed up the identification of music works and to fill in gaps. For Quansic founder and CEO FX Nuttall, while ISWCs are and remain the normalised "Musical Work" identifier, they are not openly available, as they are administered by CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers and only the CMOs members of CISAC are allowed to be an ISWC Registration Agency. 

  Hence the creation by Quansic of a new Work identifier, "open and accessible to all," to fill the gap when ISWCs are not available. The creation of BOWI is coherent with Quansic mission, added Nuttall, which is to match and curate artist metadata using 100% identifier coverage.

Identifier easily used by all parties

   Nuttall told Legrand Network that BOWI can be easily used by each party involved in the exploitation of music works, such as songwriters, publishers, labels, distributors, or even platforms. BOWI sits at the intersection of ISRCs (identifiers for sound recordings) and ISNIs (the international identifier for contributors to creative works) for performers and authors/composers to help identify musical works. 

  "Our vision is that to have metadata accuracy, all assets have to be covered by an identifier, but if you want 100% [of the assets] covered, ISWCs cannot do that," he said. "The BOWI, an open identifier, has all the benefits of ISWCs and is available to all." 

  Nuttall added that BOWIs can also solve the issue of works in the public domain that do not or cannot have an ISWC. It also provides an option to those who do not have an IPI identifier and songwriters who are not affiliated to a CMO and cannot have access to ISWCs.

Greater interoperability

  To get a BOWI, some basic information is required: the title of a musical work; the duration of the work; the year of creation; and at least one creator with its full name with an ISNI or an IPI. Nuttall adds that ISWCs and MLC identifiers are supported by BOWI "to enable greater interoperability." 

  BOWI is administered by the BOWI International Agency, set up and run by Quansic. All organisations or companies with a legitimate interest in BOWI can apply to become a BOWI Registration Agency. 

  BOWIs can be assigned in real time at the point and time of creation. In addition, the BOWI Registry is open for use at no cost, and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. Interested parties can access it as a weekly dump. Some 80,000 works have already been assigned a BOWI and are available in the Registry (bowi.io). 

  BOWI is "opened to everybody" says Nuttall, adding that BOWI is "a service to the industry," which will be run on a cost-recovery basis. "With BOWI, there are now no longer excuses for not having an identifier for musical works," said Nuttall.