A field of meta-data in MP3 and MP3pro audio files. The tags describe the contents, including song title, artist, album, year, comment, CD track and genre. ID3 tags are used for searching as well as displaying the title being played. In many cases, ID3 tags are not filled in or are erroneous, and an "ID3 tagger" utility, also called an "audio tagger" or "MP3 tagger," can be used to update them.
Other than MP3
Although often erroneously called ID3 tags, other audio files (AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) have their own meta-data tag format, but hold the same kinds of data. See music search and MusicBrainz.
Why Was This Missing?
Music CDs evolved from phonograph records that contained only sound waves "carved" into the vinyl platters. Although reserving a few thousand bytes out of 650 million would have been easy, nobody envisioned playing a CD on the computer. Early CD players had only a few digits of display, which is why track number and length were the only meta-data in a CD; however, more description fields were later added (see CD Text).
ID3 Format
Version 2 of the format (ID3v2) supports variable-length fields that hold titles of any length as well as the album cover image. The tags are at the beginning of the file so that song information can be displayed at the start for streaming audio.
The original version of the format located the data in the last 128 bytes of the file and was limited to 30-byte text fields, a 4-byte year and 1-byte genre (80 categories). Version 1.1 (ID3v1.1) added CD track number. For more information, visit www.id3.org. See music CD identification, music search, metadata and streaming audio.
Other than MP3
Although often erroneously called ID3 tags, other audio files (AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) have their own meta-data tag format, but hold the same kinds of data. See music search and MusicBrainz.
Why Was This Missing?
Music CDs evolved from phonograph records that contained only sound waves "carved" into the vinyl platters. Although reserving a few thousand bytes out of 650 million would have been easy, nobody envisioned playing a CD on the computer. Early CD players had only a few digits of display, which is why track number and length were the only meta-data in a CD; however, more description fields were later added (see CD Text).
ID3 Format
Version 2 of the format (ID3v2) supports variable-length fields that hold titles of any length as well as the album cover image. The tags are at the beginning of the file so that song information can be displayed at the start for streaming audio.
The original version of the format located the data in the last 128 bytes of the file and was limited to 30-byte text fields, a 4-byte year and 1-byte genre (80 categories). Version 1.1 (ID3v1.1) added CD track number. For more information, visit www.id3.org. See music CD identification, music search, metadata and streaming audio.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2009 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- ID3 Editor 1.13.9 (Mac)
- ID3 Editor is a small and simple MP3 tag editor, which offers the ability to edit the most wanted attributes of the ID3 tags in one window. Although iTunes offers a good interface for editing tags, it does have a few important attributes missing, e.g. 'copyright' and 'encoded by' which...
- Software downloads 2009-11-04
- Zortam Mp3 Center 1.05 (Windows)
- Zortam Mp3 Center is all-in-one Mp3 applications. It includes Auto Tagger that gets covers,lyrics and other tag information from Zortam database, MP3 Organizer, ID3 Tag Editor, Mp3 Player, CD Ripper, Wav/Mp3 Converter, Mp3 Normalizer. In addition you can batch rename files using ID3 info, synchronize ID3 tags. Zortam Mp3 Center...
- Software downloads 2009-10-30
- Arial CD Ripper 1.9.7 (Windows)
- Arial CD Ripper is a tool for CD grabbing and audio conversion. It can extract all your favorite CDs to MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, and APE files. You can convert a track and a whole CD without losing audio quality. Arial CD Ripper also can convert most of the popular...
- Software downloads 2009-10-21
- KingConvert Audio Converter 5.0.0.6 (Windows)
- Kingconvert Audio Encoder gives you completed ways to convert audio files such as MP4, MP3, WMA, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, APE, MP2, VQF. The audio converter is also an MP4 to MP3 and M4A to MP3 converter to convert MP4 to MP3 and M4A to MP3 with high quality. The...
- Software downloads 2009-10-21
- Free Mp3/Wma/Ogg Converter 7.0.1 (Windows)
- FreeMp3/Wma/Ogg Converter Converter offers easy, completed ways to convert popular audio file formats to MP3, WMA. Beside converting WMA to MP3, MP3 to WMA, the software also supports converting WAV, OGG. It provides optimized default settings. No more thinking but just a click to start WMA to MP3 conversion with...
- Software downloads 2009-10-19
- 2010 BMW 650i Convertible
- Every year we look forward to an updated BMW 6-series, and every year BMW tweaks a few things, but neglects the exterior design. We reviewed a 2009 BMW 650i Convertible earlier this year, and found the 2010 model to be much the same car. The new BMW 650i Convertible uses...
- Product reviews 2009-10-09
- AD Sound Recorder 4.6 (Windows)
- AD Sound Recorder is a sound recording program. It can record all audio from your sound card into MP3, WMA or WAV format. Real-time sound visualizations enables you to adjust your audio source and make high quality recordings. AD Sound Recorder features include hot switching of the working audio source,...
- Software downloads 2009-10-07
- Audio Workstation 6.4.2.4 (Windows)
- Audio Workstation is a complete toolkit for all your audio files. It enables you to convert your audio files between all audio formats, grab CD audio to any format with free CDDB album info service, find album covers for CD and MP3 files, edit all audio formats, add effects, normalize,...
- Software downloads 2009-09-30
- Xilisoft Audio Converter 2.1.77.0925 (Windows)
- Xilisoft Audio Converter is a powerful MP3/MP4/WAV Converter. It can convert between many popular audio formats, such as MP3, WAV, WMA, MP4, M4A, MP2, VQF, APE, OGG, AAC, and FLAC. In addition, you can use it to convert video format including AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF to all popular audio files....
- Software downloads 2009-09-28
- iSofter YouTube to MP3 Professional 3.8.927 (Windows)
- iSofter YouTube to MP3 Professional - download MP3 from complete YouTube playlists, a selected YouTube user or a channel, support batch and schedule mode. No extra codecs or scripts needed. More information: http://youtubetomp3.isofter.com/ Key Features : * Download MP3 from collections of videos download youtube videos by category, complete playlists,...
- Software downloads 2009-09-28
- MP3 Converter 4.2.175 (Windows)
- Convert RM, RMVB, WMV, AVI, MPEG, MOV, and QT to MP3, WAV, AVI, WMA, and OGG. Edit MP3 ID3 v1/v2 tag info. Multiple OGG compressor Vorbis, FLAC, Speex, and Theora. Sample rate (48K, 44.1K, 32K, 22K, 16K, and 8K), stereo/mono and bit rate (8KB-320KB). Also you can convert a selected...
- Software downloads 2009-09-28
- Export Artwork 4.1.8 (Mac)
- Export Artwork is a shareware AppleScript Studio application for use with iTunes on Mac OS X. It's main function is to extract the Artwork from the selected track's ID3 tag and copy it to an image file in a chosen location.It is also a fully fledged Artwork manager as it...
- Software downloads 2009-09-25
- Ape Ripper 5.2.1 (Windows)
- Ape Ripper is an APE+CUE music CD image file converter to convert APE music CD image (APE+CUE) file to separate MP3 files or other format audio files including WAV, MP2, VOX, G726, and G723. Ape music CD image is a compress digital music which is compressed from a music CD,...
- Software downloads 2009-09-24
- MIDI to MP3 Converter 6.1 (Mac)
- There are many situations when you may need to convert MIDI to MP3 or WAV. MIDI files are very small, but they don't contain any audio data. Thus you cannot burn them to Audio CD directly, or play them with your MP3 player. That's where MIDI to MP3 Converter becomes...
- Software downloads 2009-09-20
- CD Storage Master 7.0.4 (Windows)
- CD Storage Master is a professional CD catalog/CD database software, Manage your CD/DVD collection for all windows platforms. CD Storage Master can load not only file name, size, create time, modify time but also metadata of file (such as MP3 ID3 Tag, image file width, height and color, Microsoft Office...
- Software downloads 2009-09-20
- Nexus Radio 4.1.1 (Windows)
- Nexus Radio is a free all-in-one application for all of your music needs. Search and download over 15 million songs directly to your PC, or listen to and record over 11,000+ radio stations free of charge. You can play downloaded songs directly within Nexus Radio, or transfer songs to your...
- Software downloads 2009-09-19
- TOP MP3 Audio Tags Editor 5.8.12 (Windows)
- TOP MP3 Audio Tags Editor is an efficient and easy-to-use ID3 tag editor for MP3, WMA and OGG files. You can edit audio tags without learning. The usage tips of editing, adding or deleting tags are also provided for you. It relieves you of heavy task of editing tags off...
- Software downloads 2009-09-16
- FoxTag Editor 1.4 (Windows)
- When you have large music collections you might also have a problem managing them. This amazing piece of code is just the right thing for you, unless you do like having a genuine chaos in your files and folders and not finding your way among them. FoxTag Editor is a...
- Software downloads 2009-09-14
- TOP Audio Jukebox 5.8.12 (Windows)
- TOP Audio Jukebox is a powerful software that can help you record audio from the internal and external to WAV, MP3, WMA, or OGG format with high quality. It is a file manager which could help you organize your files regularly, and it is also an audio tag editor to...
- Software downloads 2009-09-11
- Audio Record Expert 2.0.2007.1006 (Windows)
- Audio Record Expert can record M4P into MP3, WMA, or OGG at background when the song is playing. Record streaming audio from Internet, sound generated by other programs, music from games, music from movies played by VCR or DVD player, music from cassette, tape player, sound from microphone. Record all...
- Software downloads 2009-09-10
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