Armonia, the world's largest network for international music licences, got a new member: SUISA, the Cooperative Society of Music Authors and Publishers in Switzerland. The membership will strengthen SUISA's position in the online music bisiness. View the complete press release here.

Amazon, perhaps the topmost global player in the book-trade, fell victim to a deplorable misunderstanding. They did not know the ISMN despite the fact that they are now dealing with notated music on a small but considerable scale. For this reason they put pressure on music publishers in a number of countries, e.g. Scandinavia and Hungary, to drop the ISMN and adopt the  ISBN - a clear breach of international standards. ISO 2108 (ISBN) clearly states that music is excluded ...
It does happen all the time that staff make mistakes, and we could just quote: O Lord, forgive them as they do not know what they are doing! and continue our work. But in the case of Amazon the situation is more serious - because of its strong position on the market the company cannot be easily reached - there are no email addresses that can be found easily, and using them would not lead to a reply; the same holds good with regular mail, not only with Seattle but also with national branches.
So does that mean that big companies can cancel international standards?
Fortunately, GS 1 the worldwide barcoding company rescued ISMN - in their update of the authoritative GTIN Validation Guide they included a clear statement that ISMN is - technically – on the same level as ISBN and is a valid identifier and transaction number. Thank you, GS 1 colleagues!
No comments from Amazon so far ... 
If there are any further difficulties please report to the International Agency.
The GTIN Validation Guide can be downloaded here.

As every five years, the ISMN Standard will be up for systematic review now. If a ballot proves that the ISO member countries are in favour of a revision a working group will be formed towards this end. This would give the possibility to update the standard a bit where necessary.

As CISAC reports ITV, PRS for Music and Soundmouse announced a significant advancement in the automation and streamlining of the music reporting workflow process for broadcasters, using ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number) to identify productions and music cue sheets. View the complete press release here.

CISAC and BMAT, a technology company specialized in music identification technologies, signed an agreement to integrate the ISWC into Vericast, a global music identification service that monitors millions of songs over radios and televisions across more than 50 countries worldwide. this will improve transparent and efficient royalty distribution. View the complete press release here.

As CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) reports Koda, Kono and Teosta, three Scandinavian collective rights management societies, formed a cross-border alliance called Polaris Nordic. It "aims to create higher value for music creators, and lead the way for the future of music rights management". They have agreed to develop, and run, joint back-end systems for music reporting and distribution of the revenues collected by the organisations. View the complete press release here.

The Copyright Hub has launched its pilot website. It is a gateway to information about copyright in the UK and gives users the possibility to learn about copyright in general, to get permission to use s.b. else's work or to find out about protection of their own works. View the website here.

The International Music Council accepted two new member countries and now has 45 national music councils. A list of these can be found here.

On 20/21 May 2013 the International ISMN Agency attended a regional meeting of ISBN and ISMN agencies from the Balkan region and around. The event was excellently organized by Emilija Brasic from the Serbian ISBN agency and her colleagues from the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade. Participants came from Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Srpska.
In a special workshop lively discussions brought an overview of music publishing in these countries. The situation differs a lot, e.g. in some countries there are only about 10 music publishers, in others 100. Also, there is no more than one music store in Serbia anymore whereas there are several special music shops in Slovenia. 
ISMN is used by nearly all publishers in the Balkan region, due to a good information policy of the agencies who offered seminars to music publishers and explain the ISMN system on their libraries' websites.
It was evident that under the prevalent circumstances of economic decline music departments in libraries become the more important to give users access to sheet music.
For their daily ISMN administration the agencies use special software (Cobiss or Aleph) which also produces barcodes for the publications. 

The 57th country to join the ISMN system is Iceland. The ISMN agency is situated at the National Library in Reykjavík.