ISO

Abbreviation for The International Organization for Standardization. ISO is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 130 countries, one from each country. A non-governmental organization established in 1947, the mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO’s work results in international agreements, which are published as International Standards. ISO is very active in producing manufacturing standards. These standards show up in the music industry more places than you would think. One of the more obvious places we run into ISO is in the organization of data for production of CD ROMs, which are often to ISO standards and are thus about as nearly universally readable as possible given all of the different platforms available. You can learn more about ISO at their Web site.