The International Standard Musical Work Code, or ISWC, is a unique identifier for musical works. Like the ISRC is for recordings and the ISNI is for people, the ISWC helps identify and disambiguate musical works. Along with being a unique identifier, the ISWC is also permanent and an internationally recognized ISO reference number for the identification of musical works.
International Standard Name Identifier is new metadata to resolve name ambiguity for contributors to creative works. This number can define a person, like a writer, artist, performer, producer, etc., or it can define an organization, like publishers, studios, aggregators, etc..
The Music Producers Guild (MPG) in partnership with the European Broadcast Union (EBU) have now standardized a metadata field for the International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) in wav files! This issue has been a long time overdue, but now finally gained enough traction to make it into a standard. The ISRC can now be embedded in wav files inside the core metadata. This means it will follow the file where ever it goes.
Run by Nielsen, Soundscan is the official method of tracking sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. They have been tracking sales since March of 1991. It is a common misconception that RIAA uses the Soundscan information to track sales and certify Gold and Platinum sales etc. They do not.