iTunes release: How to deal with "anonymous" session musicians when releasing a song

Hello,

overall, I try my best to work with session musicians who either have an International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) or are willed to be mentioned as collaborators by their full name when releasing a song. As far as I understood, it is an iTunes requirement to mention all session musicians involved in a music production when releasing a song. If they do not provide an ISNI, their legal name has to be listed.

Still, from time to time, I have to do with session musicians who do not want this. I should clear this before hiring anyone and will try my best to do so in future.

For instance, a session musician wants me to list the short artist name. There is no ISNI but a soundcloud profile is available. Is this possible? Can I be sure that my songs will not be banned by iTunes if I register the artist name this way at release or should I give the recording of this session musician a miss to be sure?

Same question if someone does not want to be mentioned at all. Is it allowed not to mention a session musician that was involved? How do you deal with such situations?

I also want to point out that, for me, it is important to credit everyone involved correctly. It is not okay to claim I recorded something I did not. But it is somehow new for me that this can be a problem but it truely is sometimes, some musicians just don’t want to be mentioned at all.

Best Regards
Hanz

In short, no. What Apple music are after here is figuring out who should be paid by the collection society - it has to be either the ISNI or full legal name. If it isn’t either of those then the session musician just lost money as the collection society won’t be able to allocate them any money.

I am actually not 100% sure - I’ll rope in @Noelia to see if we can get an answer.