ID3

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ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself.

There are two unrelated versions of ID3: ID3v1 and ID3v2. ID3v1 takes the form of a 128-byte segment at the end of an MP3 file containing a fixed set of data fields. ID3v1.1 is a slight modification which adds a "track number" field at the expense of a slight shortening of the "comment" field. ID3v2 is structurally very different from ID3v1, consisting of an extensible set of "frames" located at the start of the file, each with a frame identifier (a three- or four-byte string) and one piece of data. 83 types of frames are declared in the ID3v2.4 specification, and applications can also define their own types. There are standard frames for containing cover art, BPM, copyright and license, lyrics, and arbitrary text and URL data, as well as other things. Three versions of ID3v2 have been documented, each of which has extended the frame definitions.

ID3 is a de facto standard for metadata in MP3 files; no standardization body was involved in its creation nor has such an organization given it a formal approval status.^[1] It competes with the APE tag in this arena.

Lyrics3v1^[2] and Lyrics3v2^[3] were tag standards implemented before ID3v2, for adding lyrics to mp3 files. The difference with ID3v2 is that Lyrics3 is always at the end of an MP3 file, before the ID3v1 tag.

ID3v1[]

The MP3 standard did not include a method for storing file metadata. In 1996 Eric Kemp had the idea to add a small chunk of data to the audio file, thus solving the problem. The method, now known as ID3v1, quickly became the de facto standard for storing metadata in MP3s.^[4]

The ID3v1 tag occupies 128 bytes, beginning with the string TAG 128 bytes from the end of the file. The tag was placed at the end of the file to maintain compatibility with older media players. Some players would play a small burst of static when they read the tag, but most ignored it, and almost all modern players will correctly skip it. This tag allows 30 bytes each for the title, artist, album, and a "comment", four bytes for the year, and a byte to identify the genre of the song from a predefined list of 80 values (Winamp later extended this list to 148 values).^{[citation needed]}

One improvement to ID3v1 was made by Michael Mutschler in 1997. Since the comment field was too small to write anything useful, he decided to trim it by two bytes and use those two bytes to store the track number. Such tags are referred to as ID3v1.1.^[4]

ID3v1 and ID3v1.1^[5][]

Strings are either space- or zero-padded. Unset string entries are filled using an empty string. ID3v1 is 128 bytes long.^[6]

Field	Length	Description
header	3	"TAG"
title	30	30 characters of the title
artist	30	30 characters of the artist name
album	30	30 characters of the album name
year	4	A four-digit year
comment	28[7] or 30	The comment.
zero-byte[7]	1	If a track number is stored, this byte contains a binary 0.
track[7]	1	The number of the track on the album, or 0. Invalid, if previous byte is not a binary 0.
genre	1	Index in a list of genres, or 255

ID3v1 pre-defines a set of genres denoted by numerical codes. Winamp extended the list by adding more genres in its own music player, which were later adopted by others (though some are of dubious value: e.g. "Primus" is one specific band, not a genre, and "Negerpunk" appears to be a racist joke in Swedish). However, support for the extended Winamp list is not universal. In some cases, only the genres up to 125 are supported.^[8][9]

Enhanced TAG^[10][]

The Enhanced tag is an extra data block before an ID3v1 tag, which extends the title, artist and album fields to 60 bytes each, offers a freetext genre, a one-byte (values 0–5) speed and the start and stop time of the music in the MP3 file, e.g., for fading in. If none of the fields are used, it will be automatically omitted.

Some programs supporting ID3v1 tags can read the extended tag, but writing may leave stale values in the extended block. The extended block is not an official standard and is only supported by a few programs, not including XMMS or Winamp. The Enhanced tag is sometimes referred to as the "extended" tag.

The Enhanced tag is 227 bytes long, and placed before the ID3v1 tag.

Field	Length	Description
header	4	"TAG+"
title	60	60 characters of the title
artist	60	60 characters of the artist name
album	60	60 characters of the album name
speed	1	0=unset, 1=slow, 2= medium, 3=fast, 4=hardcore
genre	30	A free-text field for the genre
start-time	6	the start of the music as mmm:ss
end-time	6	the end of the music as mmm:ss

ID3v1.2^[11][]

ID3v1.2 purpose is to add small improvements to ID3v1.1 informal standard without breaking the ID3v1 informal standard The ID3v1.2 tag will not cause any issues in legacy decoders/players (old ones)^[11]

Genre list in ID3v1^[12][]

standard[]

Winamp Extended List[]

Genres 142–147 were added in the 1 June 1998 release of Winamp 1.91; genres 148–191 were added in Winamp 5.6 (30 November 2010).

ID3v2[]

In 1998, a new specification called ID3v2 was created by multiple contributors.^[13] Although it bears the name ID3, its structure is very different from ID3v1.

ID3v2 tags are of variable size, and usually occur at the start of the file, which aids streaming media as the metadata is essentially available as soon as the file starts streaming instead of requiring the entire file to be read first as is the case with ID3v1. ID3v2 tags consist of a number of frames, each of which contains a piece of metadata. For example, the TIT2 frame contains the title, and the WOAR frame contains the URL of the artist's website. Frames can be up to 16MB in length, while total tag size is limited to 256MB. The internationalization problem was solved by allowing the encoding of strings not only in ISO-8859-1, but also in Unicode.

Textual frames are marked with an encoding byte.^[14]

$00 – ISO-8859-1 (LATIN-1, Identical to ASCII for values smaller than 0x80).
$01 – UCS-2 encoded Unicode with BOM, in ID3v2.2 and ID3v2.3.
$02 – UTF-16BE encoded Unicode without BOM, in ID3v2.4.
$03 – UTF-8 encoded Unicode, in ID3v2.4.

However, mojibake is still common when using local encodings instead of Unicode. In particular, some Japanese editors are known to use Shift JIS encoding, which usually has disastrous effects: it will not work with any standard-compliant software regardless of local settings (since it is not supported by the standard), will not work outside Japan (since Shift JIS has very little support outside Japan), and will not even work on all Japanese computers even with a specifically non-compliant reader (as it is software-dependent and settings-dependent).

There are 83 types of frames declared in the ID3v2.4 specification,^[15] and applications can also define their own types. There are standard frames for containing cover art, BPM, copyright and license, lyrics, and arbitrary text and URL data, as well as other things. There are three versions of ID3v2:

ID3v2.2

v2.2 was the first public version of ID3v2. It used three character frame identifiers rather than four (TT2 for the title instead of TIT2). Most of the common v2.3 and v2.4 frames have direct analogues in v2.2. Now this standard is considered obsolete.^[16]

ID3v2.3

v2.3 expanded the frame identifier to four characters, and added a number of frames. This is the most widely used version of ID3v2 tags, and is widely supported by Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player.^[17]

ID3v2.4

v2.4 was published on November 1, 2000, and remains the latest version. A major new addition is that a text frame can contain multiple values, separated with a null byte. It also allows textual data to be encoded in UTF-8 rather than UTF-16, which was a common practice in some parts of the world in earlier tags (despite the standard, since it was not supported yet) because UTF-8 typically encodes Asian scripts less efficiently than UTF-16. Another new feature allows the addition of a tag to the end of the file before other tags (like ID3v1).^[18]

For many years Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player did not interpret ID3v2.4 tags correctly,^[19] until the 2017 Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703). As of the Windows October 2020 Update, they still cannot correctly interpret some of the non-English and Asian characters in the ID3v2.4 tag.

ID3v2 star rating tag issue[]

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There is a loose de facto standard for implementation of song ratings. Most apps will display 0 to 5 stars for any given song, and how the stars are expressed can vary. For instance, when rating a song in iTunes, the rating is not embedded in the tag in the music file, but is instead stored in a separate database that contains all of the iTunes metadata. Other media players can embed rating tags in music files, but not necessarily the same way, so as a result a song which is rated on one media player sometimes won't display the rating the same way, or at all, when played on other software or mobile device.^{[citation needed]}

However, there is a "Popularimeter" frame in the ID3v2 specification meant for this purpose. The frame is called POPM and Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player, Winamp, foobar2000, MediaMonkey, and other software all map roughly the same ranges of 0–255 to a 0–5 stars value for display.

The following list details how Windows Explorer reads and writes the POPM frame:

• 224–255 = 5 stars when READ with Windows Explorer, writes 255
• 160–223 = 4 stars when READ with Windows Explorer, writes 196
• 096-159 = 3 stars when READ with Windows Explorer, writes 128
• 032-095 = 2 stars when READ with Windows Explorer, writes 64
• 001-031 = 1 star when READ with Windows Explorer, writes 1

Windows Explorer uses the following syntax:

Windows Media Player 9 Series | 255 | 0

The 0 is the play counter portion of POPM as per the ID3v2 POPM specification, which is not to be confused or conflated with the PCNT frame, which is a separate frame meant entirely for playcounts. If an app supports granularity however, it should write 1 for one full star, and then 2–31 would be granular points under one full star. Notably, the ID string Windows uses is not an email address, as called for in the specifications. Further, Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player up to and including Windows 7 and WMP 12 (possibly beyond)^{[clarification needed]} contain a bug such that, if one were to use them to rate files, any Replay Gain tags one would have will be corrupted.^{[citation needed]} WMP also writes the same values as described above, and reads the same way as well, EXCEPT for the cutoff between 4 and 5 stars, which is slightly different and basically of no consequence. WMP uses 221/222 instead, for reasons that are not clear.

ID3v2 chapters[]

The ID3v2 Chapter Addendum was published in December 2005 but is not widely supported as yet. It allows users to jump easily to specific locations or chapters within an audio file and can provide a synchronized slide show of images and titles during playback. Typical applications include Enhanced podcasts and it can be used in ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 tags.^[20]

ID3v2 embedded image extension[]

The metadata can contain an "Attached Picture" ID3 frame ('PIC' or 'APIC') containing an image. A field in this frame can indicate the picture type. The following types are defined:^[21]

$00     Other
$01     32x32 pixels 'file icon' (PNG only)
$02     Other file icon
$03     Cover (front)
$04     Cover (back)
$05     Leaflet page
$06     Media (e.g. label side of CD)
$07     Lead artist/lead performer/soloist
$08     Artist/performer
$09     Conductor
$0A     Band/Orchestra
$0B     Composer
$0C     Lyricist/text writer
$0D     Recording Location
$0E     During recording
$0F     During performance
$10     Movie/video screen capture
$11     A bright coloured fish
$12     Illustration
$13     Band/artist logotype
$14     Publisher/Studio logotype

ID3v2 frame specification[]

Description	Frame
	v2.3	v2.4
Audio encryption	AENC
Audio seek point index	N/A	ASPI
Attached picture	APIC
Comments	COMM
Commercial frame	COMR
Encryption method registration	ENCR
Equalization	EQUA	EQU2
Event timing codes	ETCO
General encapsulated object	GEOB
Group identification registration	GRID
Linked information	LINK
Music CD identifier	MCDI
MPEG location lookup table	MLLT
Ownership frame	OWNE
Private frame	PRIV
Play counter	PCNT
Popularimeter	POPM
Position synchronisation frame	POSS
Recommended buffer size	RBUF
Relative volume adjustment	RVAD	RVA2
Reverb	RVRB
Seek frame	N/A	SEEK
Signature frame	N/A	SIGN
Synchronized lyric/text	SYLT
Synchronized tempo codes	SYTC
Beats per minute (BPM)	TBPM
Initial key	TKEY
Content type	TCON
Mood	N/A	TMOO
Copyright message	TCOP
Date	TDAT	TDRCb
Recording dates	TRDA	TDRCb
Recording time	N/A	TDRCb
Time	TIME	TDRCb
Year	TYER	TDRCb
Release time	N/A	TDRL
Tagging time	N/A	TDTG
Encoding time	N/A	TDEN
Encoded by	TENC
Software/Hardware and settings used for encoding	TSSE
Playlist delay	TDLY
Content group description	TIT1
Title/songname/content description	TIT2
Subtitle/Description refinement	TIT3
Album/Movie/Show title	TALB
Language(s)	TLAN
Length	TLEN
Size	TSIZ	Dropped
File type	TFLT
Media type	TMED
File owner/licensee	TOWN
Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)	TPE1c
Band/orchestra/accompaniment	TPE2
Conductor/performer refinement	TPE3
Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by	TPE4
Composer	TCOMc
Lyricist/Text writer	TEXTc
Involved people list	IPLS	TIPLa
Musician credits list	N/A	TMCLa
Original album/movie/show title	TOAL
Original filename	TOFN
Original lyricist(s)/text writer(s)	TOLYc
Original artist(s)/performer(s)	TOPEc
Original release year	TORY	TDOR
Track number/Position in set	TRCK
Part of a set	TPOS
Set subtitle	N/A	TSST
Produced notice	N/A	TPRO
Publisher	TPUB
Internet radio station name	TRSN
Internet radio station owner	TRSO
Album sort order	N/A	TSOA
Performer sort order	N/A	TSOP
Title sort order	N/A	TSOT
International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)	TSRC
User defined text information frame	TXXX
Unique file identifier	UFID
Terms of use	USER
Unsynchronized lyric/text transcription	USLT
Commercial information	WCOM
Copyright/Legal information	WCOP
Official audio file webpage	WOAF
Official artist/performer webpage	WOAR
Official audio source webpage	WOAS
Official internet radio station homepage	WORS
Payment	WPAY
Publishers official webpage	WPUB
User defined URL link frame	WXXX

Notes:

Version 2.4 of the specification prescribes that all text fields (the fields that start with a T, except for TXXX) can contain multiple values separated by a null character. The null character varies by character encoding.

Editing ID3 tags[]

ID3 tags may be edited in a variety of ways. On some platforms the file's properties may be edited by viewing extended information in the file manager. Additionally most audio players allow editing single or groups of files. Editing groups of files is often referred to as "batch tagging". There are also specialized applications, called taggers, which concentrate specifically on editing the tags and related tasks. Some, such as puddletag offer advanced features such as advanced batch tagging or editing based on regular expressions.

Non-MP3-implementation and alternatives[]

ID3 tags were designed with MP3 in mind, so they would work without problems with MP3 and MP3Pro files. However, the tagsets are an independent part of the MP3 file and should be usable elsewhere. In practice, the only other formats that widely use ID3v2 tags are AIFF and WAV. In AIFF, the tag is stored inside an IFF chunk named "ID3". Windows media ASF files (WMA, WMV) have their own tagging formats but also support ID3 Tags embedded as attributes.^[23]

MP4 also allows the embedding of an ID3 tag.^[24]

See also[]

• CD-Text
• Vorbis comment
• Standard Architecture for Universal Comment Extensions (SAUCE)
• XBin (eXtended Binary)

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• List of genres in ID3v1
• ID3v1 Specification
• ID3 TAG and Enhanced TAG specification at the Wayback Machine (archived 10 March 2012)
• TagLib
• Side-by-side Comparison of ID3 Versions and Frames at the Wayback Machine (archived 20 June 2012)
• Online ID3 Tag Editor