The messages will allow such standardised information flow about the Releases themselves (i.e. Release metadata) as well as information about the commercial terms under which such Releases can be made available.

Sending or receiving a message using this standard cannot be presumed to indicate, however, that all legal obligations are met for the Releases to be legitimately made available.

Clause 5 provides an overall choreography for sending and receiving the messages defined in this standard. Clause 6 then specifies the messages defined in this standard, and their descriptions as they appear in the DDEX Data Dictionary.

Annex A then provides informative notes about this version of the standard, indicating the features new to this version of the Electronic Release Notification Message Suite Standard.

• DDEX: Data Dictionary Standard. Latest Version.
• DDEX: Party Identifier (DPID) Standard. Latest Version.
• IFPI: Global Release Identifier (GRid) Standard. Latest Version.
• IETF RfC 5646: Tags for Identifying Languages. Latest Version.
• ISO 639-1988: Code for the representation of the names of languages.
• ISO 3166-1:1997: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their sub-divisions – Part 1: Country codes.
• ISO 3901:2001: Information and documentation – International Standard Recording Code (ISRC).
• ISO 4217:2001: Codes for the representation of currencies and funds.
• ISO 7064:1983: Data Processing – Check Character Systems.
• ISO 8601: Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times. Latest Version.^[1]
• W3C: XML Schema Part 1 - Structures. Second Edition. 2004
• W3C: XML Schema Part 2 - Datatypes. Second Edition. 2004

Digital Service Provider (DSP)

A Digital Service Provider (DSP), a Party making Releases available to Consumers or other DSPs over a public Telecom network. This includes MSPs (Mobile Service Providers) and ISPs (Internet Service Providers). 

Main Release

Musical Work

A Work intended to be perceivable as a combination of sounds, with or without accompanying text.

Any words that are intended to be expressed with a MusicalWork (often termed Lyrics) form part of that MusicalWork; not all MusicalWorks have Lyrics.
A MusicalWork may be expressed and fixed to become part of a SoundRecording or a Video Recording, or may be used to create notated music (sheet music, scores, instrumental parts) or sound generation codes (such as MIDI files).
In some cases, the MusicalWork comes into existence simultaneously with its expression. This is common in extemporised forms such as jazz music.

Product

A Manifestation of a Release (or another 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).

Profile

A subset of a DDEX standard. Profiles define how to use the capabilities of a DDEX standard in a specific commercial context.

Release

A Release is an abstract entity representing a bundle of one or more Resources compiled by an Issuer. The Resources in Releases are normally primarily sound recordings or music audio-visual recordings, 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; one Release may be disseminated in many different Products.

Release Creator

Release Creator is an organisation which is the owner of copyrights in sound and/or music audiovisual recordings and/or exclusive licensees of copyrights in sound and/or music audiovisual recordings.

Release Distributor

Release Distributor is an organisation, which is duly authorised by a Release Creator to offer Releases manifested in the form of Products to consumers. Release Distributors include Digital Service Providers (DSPs) and Mobile Service Providers (MSPs) as well as other organisations.

Resource

A digital fixation of an expression of an abstract Work (such as a sound recording, a video, an image, software or a passage of text). Resources are individual assets that make up a Release. Typical Resources are sound recordings, video clips and cover art images.

Track Release

Figure 1 — Choreography of the Electronic Release Notification Message Suite

Table 1 below summarises the point in the release cycle when each message is sent. The table also indicates who sends which message to whom and which of the messages are defined in this Standard.

Table 1 — Messages in the Electronic Release Notification Message Suite

http://ddex.net/xml/ern/42

All messages developed within DDEX are based upon a common set of elements and their definitions. These are contained in the DDEX Data Dictionary available from kb.ddex.net.

The full namespace for the XML Schema document for the allowed-value sets is

http://ddex.net/xml/avs/avs

DDEX may regularly extend this list of allowed-value sets. Any such extensions to this list are issued on a date later than the date on which this Standard is issued but still may form part of this Standard. Thus the list of allowed-value sets provided Clause 6.6 contains the list of allowed-value sets valid on the data of issuance of this standard.

The allowed values are listed, defined and provided through the DDEX Data Dictionary Standard in accordance with its latest version. Other values are not possible unless by using the mechanism described below.

Some of the allowed value sets contain a provision to either use a User Defined Value instead of a DDEX-defined value (in that case the message sender has to select the value UserDefined from the AVS and provide its own value in the XML attribute UserDefinedValue), or to augment a DDEX-defined value (in that case the message sender may not select the value UserDefined from the AVS but shall provide its additional information in the XML attribute UserDefinedValue). In either case the Namespace attribute shall be used to indicate by whom the UserDefinedValue is defined and where it is maintained.

• ReleaseType (of the Main Release);
• UseType; and
• CommercialModelType.

The ReleaseType categorises the Release from the point of view of the Release Creator. For example, a Release Creator may create a Release for use as a ring-back tone on a mobile phone. This is distinct from the UseType which describes what a consumer is allowed to do with a Release. For example, a Release created as a “normal” digital album, might still be used as a ring tone.

The third dimension, the CommercialModel type describes how consumers pay for the Release, whether the transactions are based on subscriptions or whether the consumer pays directly for each Release received.

The hierarchical structure of the messages is provided through indentation. On the MessageHeader for example, the PartyName is a child of Sender. Thus, a Sender contains a PartyName (plus a PartyId). A second example from the MessageHeader is the MessageAuditTrail that contains MessageAuditTrailEvents which, in turn, contains a MessagingPartyDescriptor and a DateTime element. All elements that have sub-elements are printed in bold. The MessageAuditTrailEvents element also shows a second structural feature of the tabular message summary: the cardinality. In the case of MessageAuditTrailEvents the entry "1-n" means that each MessageAuditTrail contains one or more MessageAuditTrailEvents.

Other possible cardinality entries are: "1" (for: exactly one), "0-1" (for none or one) or "0-n" (for none to multiple). Elements shown in italics are represented in the XML Schema as XML Attributes. In several places within the messages, the message sender may need to make a choice between using two or more XML elements. These instances are marked in the tabular representation of the messages below with the keyword XmlChoice. This keyword is not part of the messages. Instead exactly one of the “branches” below the XmlChoice keyword has to be used.

Version 4.1 has been developed in response of testing with version 4. It further streamlines the communication of Releases from Release Creators to Release Distributors. The major changes include:

• Simplified process to 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 Release Creator's supply chain to support, for instance, voice activated music services;
• Ability to for a Release Creator so signal to a Release Distributor how it wishes artist information should be displayed as part of a title;
• Ability to communicate display credits;
• 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 RIN and MLC.

Version 4.1.1 corrects 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, add the ability to differentiate “covers” from “originals”) and adds rules for the communication of Preview Dates.

Version 4.2 adds 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 to signal a language; and
• The ability to communicate record company personnel that the MessageSender request be granted access to the MessageRecipient’s systems to administer a Release. Version 

Version 4.2 also enhances the

• Handling of different encodings of one recording; and
• Communication of relationships between Releases and Resources.