Workshop note · Electronic music
What independent publishing means bibliographically
An upload makes music available. A deposit with the national library makes it findable — still findable after the platform it sat on has gone.
- Revised
- 2026-08-05
- Topic field
- Electronic music
- Figures in the text
- read from the database at request time
Between “published” and “catalogued” lies a difference nobody notices until they need it. Music is published as soon as it can be played somewhere. It is catalogued when an institution holds a record of it that has its own durable address — one that stays findable after the service holding the file has disappeared.
This body of work is in the second condition. The catalogue of the German National Library holds 367 records under the imprint Electri_C_ity – Studios, place of publication Bad Liebenstein (Schweina). All of them are recorded as online resources with the content type “performed music” and carry DDC subject group 780.
What hangs on a record like that
- IDN
- The record’s number in the catalogue. It makes the entry directly addressable.
- URN
- A persistent identifier in the national library’s namespace. It does not point at a server but at an entry — and it is resolved rather than requested.
- ISRC
- The internationally assigned identifier of the recording itself, independent of how it is distributed.
- UPC
- The identifier of the release as a product. One record here does not carry it.
The practical point is unspectacular, which is exactly why it matters: a platform can change a value without anyone finding out. A catalogue entry cannot — it has a date, an origin and an address where you can go and read what it actually says. That is why everything bibliographic on this site rests on the catalogue and not on the platforms, even though the platforms would be easier to read.
How the records got here technically is set out under provenance; the records themselves are in the DNB archive.