Where do people get barcodes for digital releases?

MusicBrainz
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1

I often see a barcode assigned for a digital releas. Now I wonder where do people get these, because as far as I know barcodes are only on a CD or other media that you can buy in a store.

2

Most digital music has EAN/UPC (which we count as barcodes even if they’re not, well, printed bars). Every release on Apple Music for example (AFAICT) is required to have an UPC, and they are available via their APIs.

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3

I dont have an Apple Music or an Apple account is there any way tho get acces to the API anyway and how exactly can I get these numbers.

4

Submission tools like Harmony or a-tisket will fetch the barcodes from the APIs of various music services.

You can paste the URLs to a release on one of the supported services and the tools will fetch the details, including the barcode if available.

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