Talk:ID3

Internationalization

From ID3v2 section: "ID3v2 supports Unicode so that internationalized tags can be used." What does this mean? --69.212.110.189 22:25, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It means that you can use characters outside the ASCII character set, such as Cyrillic or Chinese characters, in tags. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 02:44, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, well can't Unicode be used for ID3v1 as well? If a byte order mark was used for ID3v1, there'd be no ambiguity either. Winamp as well as NOMAD Jukebox on Japanese edition of Windows encodes ID3v2 text in Shift-JIS, so it seems like while the standards blabber on about whatever, actual implementers pretty much ignore it. (iTunes does write ID3v2 tags in Unicode though, however.) I'm not sure how ID3v2 can support Unicode. Actual softwares can support Unicode. The ID3 specification merely says Unicode should be used. --69.212.110.189 23:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, ID3v2 says Unicode could be used, you can use ISO 8859-1 as well. However, when using ISO 8859-1, most implementers interpret this liberally, so they take that to mean "the local character set", e.g. Shift-JIS. (Technically that's not legal, but who cares.) If you do encode unicode, this will be signalled inside the tag, ID3v2 provides tag "frames" which can be flagged to be of a certain type. Nixdorf 05:17, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

ID3 version 2 has a 'text entry descriptor byte' (TEDB) in text-related frames which allows to indicate whether the text that follows is ASCII (ISO 8859-1) or Unicode. ID3 version 2.4 provides another code for UTF8 entries. ID3V1 simply has no TEDB in text fields. Rbakels (talk) 15:00, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Impending cleanup

I'd like to rewrite this page to make it considerably more readable. I want to explain how ID3 differs from other tagging formats, and why the multiple versions are hard to support at the time, in a less technical manner. Towards that end, if anyone is really attached to the ID3v1 specification or complete genre list please speak up now. IMO they're absolutely stupid; Wikipedia is not a specification archive. piman 06:12, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

At the same time, an encyclopedia is about documenting everything, so I do not see why we shouldn't keep the old formats. Actually, a very large number of articles are about historical events, books, etc. so why not in computer science too? That being said, I agree that as it stands this article still looks quite messy. Alexis Wilke (talk) 00:05, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

It is not really hard to support ID3 V2, V3 and V4 in the same code. It is a straightforward programming endeavour. I have developed some C++ objects classes to that end. Re Id3V1, this format is completely different. But the ID3V1 text should be kept, since I have seen many files "in the wild" that still contain this type of tag, sometimes as the only meta-information. So the genre list is still relevant as well. Rbakels (talk) 15:07, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

File tags

I see these mp3 file tag utilities, but are there any similiar utilities for tagging ordinary data files?Thisoldman 02:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I found a similar question posted here on the Mp3tag Forums. Three suggestions were:

• Ant Renamer
• Lupas Rename
• ReNamer

I have not used any of these programs, so simply pass along the information for what it is. — Senator2029 (talk) 02:59, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

2.4 support

"Despite being over five years old, ID3v2.4 has not seen much adoption. This is likely because the ID3v2 reference implementation still cannot read or write it." That's not really accurate and definitely not NPOV. I'd like to reword it to something like, "ID3v2.4, even several years after the publication of the standard, has been held back by slow adoption by several major applications." Actually I think the only big one application that still doesn't support 2.4 is Windows Media Player. iTunes, Real and the majority of Open Source applications do. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scott.wheeler (talk • contribs) 14:14, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

This certainly sounds like necessary information. Does anyone have a reliable source for any of it? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What exactly are you looking for? The article claims: 1) ID3v2.4 has not seen much adoption. If you like, I could go download a thousand files from a filesharing service and see what version they are, but I already know the answer: They will be v2.3. 2) The ID3v2 reference implementation, libid3v2, cannot read or write ID3v2.4. Here's a SourceForge bug about it. The free software programs that do support it use TagLib, Mutagen, or libid3tag; most custom libraries have issues with v2.4. This is far from a majority of programs - maybe a majority of users, now that GStreamer uses TagLib.

WMP still does not support v2.4. iTunes only began supporting it recently (mid-2005, I believe, with 5.0), writes ID3v2.2 by default (according to iTunes), and still has one major bug in synchsafe int handling. foobar2000 only starting writing ID3 tags *at all* in mid-2005. piman 21:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

All information included in Wikipedia articles is supposed to be based on existing data from reliable sources. Even if the Wikipedia editors are the people who created the ID3 specification, they should not transcribe their own knowledge into an article on the subject without citing sources, lest the information be considered original research. This may not be intuitive, but it is one of the Wikipedia:Five pillars (part of #1, in fact). In the case I am asking about, we would be looking for any respectable publications (perhaps a Internet music or programming magazine, or official documents from the ID3 website) that make the statements you give above, piman. Citing manuals and/or release documentation for specific software might be done, but this is likely more detail than we need. One would hope that, with an active, worldwide developer community in an extremely fast-growing market, one could find sourceable lamentations on the dearth of support of the latest standards. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I gave a cite for the main claim of the sentence, that id3lib does not support ID3v2.4. In fact, that is the only substantive difference between the current wording and Scott's. What more do you want? The idea you'll find an issue of DDJ dedicated to ID3 parsers is pretty laughable, you won't find any more respectable sources than release announcements. (And you won't find out about the iTunes bug there either, since Apple's bug tracker isn't public. But Scott can verify it exists.) piman 07:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

To flesh things out a bit better: (a) id3lib is not a "reference implementation", it's simply an id3 library. I don't think you'll be able to cite anywhere authoritative that claims otherwise. And even if it was a reference implementation the extension that adoption is connected to such is just speculation. (b) Even if it has been within the last couple of years that 2.4 has seen more adoption, that's different than it not being adopted. Unfortunately the archives for the id3v2 spec mailing list are not on the web, but many of these things have been discussed there. I can push for adding a compatibility matrix to the ID3v2 web site, which would qualify as an authoritative source, but I feel like in the absence of such that the wording I suggested errs on the side of caution. Scott.wheeler 22:31, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

id3lib was the first link on id3.org/implement.html for years, and hundreds of software projects still in use are based on it. After tags have passed through Mutagen or TagLib they must be in v2.4, so I think that's a bad metric to gauge adoption. Does TagLib not get bi-weekly complaints that it "deleted" the tags in a file from a user who is trying to roundtrip tags between WMP/iTunes/id3lib/etc? Mutagen does.

Again, I would like to see a case of someone distributing large amounts of MP3s that have, originally, ID3v2.4 tags. Please note that I'm referring to ID3v2.4 adoption in files. A software matrix that shows only 10% of products without v2.4 support does not accurately convey the fact that that those software products (EasyTag, Windows Media Player, iTunes, old versions of foobar2000) make up 90% of the users. Unfortunately, as you say, the mailing lists are closed and so don't let us make proper citations.

I feel the current passage is accurate. Files do not have ID3v2.4 tags, but increasingly new tools are only writing v2.4. That means, in a few years, files will probably have v2.4 tags. But that is not the case right now. piman 04:56, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

There are still some basic issues here:

• A reference implementation however has a specific meaning. id3lib is not that. As such, that part of the passage is inaccurate.
• The percetages above are ad hoc. I would contest them, but neither of us have reliable sources.
• The original text states that this is because id3lib does not support ID3v2.4; again, that's an unsubstantiated claim. The only major commercial application that I know of using id3lib is RealPlayer and it in fact uses a forked version that does support ID3v2.4. (That I can site if useful; it came up on the Helix mailing lists a while back.)
• Given that the text as is is about software support, again, I find it odd to claim that it's really about what files actually have. If reworded as "Software adoption for ID3v2.4 has come around in the last couple of years, however the majority of files still use older versions of ID3v2" I probably wouldn't contest that.

I'd like to hear other folks comments on this. It's clear that we disagree, but I feel like in the absense of sources it's still better to make a less authoritative claim. Feeling that the passage is accurate isn't really enough.  :-) Scott.wheeler 01:01, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Lawyers learned me the Latin sentence Negativa non sunt probanda: you can not prove an absence. But the fact of the matter is that I have seen many files with ID3 V2.3 tags, and few with ID3 V2.4 tags. iTunes still use 2.2. This is valuable information for the Wikipedia audience even if it can not really be proven. Perhaps the designers of ID3 V2.4.0 do not like its lack of acceptance? ID3 V2.4.0 offers some nice functionality (like the support for UTF8 text), but some functions make it very complicated, like "unsynchronization". So the lack of support for ID3 V2.4.0 may not just be a matter of time, it may be a deliberate decision to prefer the simplicity of ID3 V2.3 (or V2.2) at the expense of some advanced functionality deemed not essential. A factor may also be the lack of ID 2.4.0 files allowing to test software using its advanced functionality. Rbakels (talk) 06:09, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Vorbis Comments

I'm going to give this one a big, "Huh?" Ape tags happen, but I don't know of any tools that write vorbis comments to (raw) MP3s. If no citation surfaces I'd like to remove that bit. Scott.wheeler 23:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I've clarified what I meant by that paragraph: Few new audio formats have adopted ID3, most use APEv2 (if they don't have a decent container; Musepack, WavPack) or Vorbis comments (if they do; any Ogg format, FLAC). An exception would be True Audio, which does use ID3, but I'm not sure TA is notable enough to mention there.

PC vs. Desktop

I changed PC to desktop because PC is overused and has a very confused meaning now. It is often used to mean a computer running some version of windows, but originally the word referred to the hardware, which is capable of running, and often does run, many different operating systems. Additionally, music players for desktop operating systems which run on non-PC hardware (think iTunes on the Mac!) are also able to display and edit id3 tags with no problem. Jon Wilson 24.162.120.52 03:23, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree, I feel Desktop isolates Laptops by definition. Linux is most commonly used on a PC, which means only OSX fanboys would whine about such a thing, and anyone using OSX is more than familiar with the fact that ID3 isn't a windows only thing. -NeF (talk) 13:26, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

iTunes

I don't think iTunes should be cited in the "Editing ID3 tags" section, otherwise it seems that the most widely accepted way of editing ID3 tags is by using iTunes. I understand that for the majority of people iTunes is _the_ media player, but leaving the article as it is seems like placing a big advertisement in it. Asymmetric 16:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I think just saying "audio player" (or "music player") with a link to the comparison page would be preferable. Scott.wheeler 20:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Criticism: Playcount

I'd like to propose an additional paragraph for the problems and criticism subsection: the playcount field that was added during the development of ID3v2 (I believe it was in version 2.2). Since ID3v2.3 the tag is called PCNT and, of course, records the number of times the file has been played back. This tag is criticised heavily because it does not actually represent information about the audio file. For example, each time a file is listened to with a player that updates the PCNT field, it becomes to P2P applications or backup software essentially a new file, although technically no change has been made. This results in everyone having a supposedly different file in file sharing networks or file cataloging utilities, depending on how often it has been listened to, and backup software storing these files not every time they have been changed, but every time they were listened to. 84.227.18.173 13:54, 22 July 2007 (UTC) (Anamon)

Actually, reading over that section again, I'd tend towards the opposite direction. I think that criticisms of specific frame types is really too specific for the article. I'd rather generalize it to something like, "ID3v2 has several values that it stores which are problematic when used in day-to-day applications. Examples include [...]" but not jumping into the specific frame names. Scott.wheeler 11:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. I think the article should also mention that those tags are not only problematic in practical use, but also theoretically flawed. ID3 is a metadata standard that exists to describe the piece of music it is associated with it. It should be clear to anyone who has a basic understanding of databases that information like "playcount" or "rating" is not actually related to the music, but to a specific listener. 84.227.94.168 (talk) 17:43, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Copyediting needed

Just a note here in case anyone has time for it before I do; this edit was obviously made by a non-native speaker and introduced many gramatical errors. Scott.wheeler 12:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Viruses in ID3 tags

I just found out about how virus code can be embedded in an ID3 tag. I'm by no means an expert on the subject but I was surprised there was no information about this on Wikipedia. Apparently back in like 2002 Windows XP and WinAmp 2.something were exploitable using a buffer overrun technique to execute code from the ID3 tag in an mp3. Both Windows and WinAmp came out with patches to correct the vulnerabilities. With updated software, as far as I can tell, it's impossible for an infected mp3 to infect a computer system, but mp3s can still contain embedded viruses. If anyone has more information, I'd say it would be worth it to include on the article page. --CBecker 06:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be a bug in those respective programs and has little to do with ID3 tags themselves. I've also not heard of these (and I expect that I would have...); do you have any sources for this information? Scott.wheeler 11:22, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Such a bug was found in Winamp in 2005. The term "virus" is rather lurid in this context though. Such code could be anything i.e., "abitrary code". Even if one can assume such code would seldomly do something good, a virus is a rather specific kind of code e.g., it could just as well launch your browser and display some ads which is not a virus. In any case, this issue is more about Winamp than ID3 because it's a flaw in the implementation and not the design. Showing ads in a browser is actually supported by Microsoft and QuickTime which makes that one a design flaw considering that spammers love this feature. Buffer overflows that allow injection and execution of arbitrary code are not uncommon, so basically this will be possible with many software/data combinations. Winamp bug (2005). --217.87.88.52 20:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

2NF Tags (or Multiple Genres)

The biggest flaw with current versions of ID3 is that lack of ability to use multiple data for the same tags, such as having multiple genres. It would have to be a non specified number of fields within the 1 tag. Having music that can be classified as multiple genres such as DnB (Drum&Bass) and Psychedelic makes only having one genre tag rather useless. There are many popular music torrent sites that employ tagging, which allow multiple genres to be tagged to a song allowing for much easier ways of searching within the sub genres of music. This gives indication that the functionality would be widely used and does in fact improve cataloguing of music.

Is there any indication that ID3 may one day allow such a thing? -NeF (talk) 13:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

While this isn't really the right place to debate what ID3 should or shouldn't have, ID3v2 has always supported multiple genres, support for such is just not generally used in the applications that work with it. Scott.wheeler (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, I have come to realize this fact over the last few months since switching to Foobar2000, which has proper parsing of multiple items within a single field. I guess my disappointment was misdirected and should be towards devices and software players that do not allow this functionality. --NeF (talk) 22:57, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible error/vandalism? (no, bright coloured fish is in the spec)

At $11 under [1] the field is labeled as "A bright coloured fish". Is this correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.232.211.156 (talk) 16:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

yes, see the id3 spec Mikachu42 (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

ID3v2 tag misinformation

I'm guessing that in the tag list $11 shouldn't be: $11 – A bright coloured fish —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.130.227 (talk) 03:48, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

• this is already answered on this talk page, it is in the spec. Mikachu42 (talk) 23:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Clean up of template tags

As there seems to be no discussion on this page regarding the "banner" style template tag that has been applied to this article I have cleaned it up. I have replaced the multiple issues template with one requesting additional citations. The remainder of the issues seem unsubstantiated: Lead section does not adequately summarise: this does not appear to describe the introduction which summarise the subject clearly Original Research: while this may be true it seems to simply duplicate the request for more citations. p.s Personally I find this requirement has become a problematic issue on wiki that conflicts with the basic edict that nothing should stand in the way of improving wiki or an article - clearly this article is valuable and simply needs references, something the complainant could have provided in addition to the required explanation of the banner-tag on this Talk page. Too technical: in comparison with articles on similarly technical subjects I think this one is remarkably non-technical. See e.g articles on science subjects of on other ICT subjects. LookingGlass (talk) 08:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Embedding in MP3

It would be helpful if the page said at least briefly how ID3v2 tags are embedded in MP3 files (where they fit within MP3 syntax) and then pointed to further information.

2602:306:C5A2:9160:221:97FF:FE13:6E3 (talk) 06:18, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Good idea. Perhaps the title should be "MP3 file meta-data". As far as I know. MP3 files can contain leading and trailing meta-data (the designations are mine, please correct if necessary, I am not native speaker).

• Leading meta-data precedes the actual MP3 stream, and consists of ID3 V2.2 and higher frames. Syntactically the first MP3 frame may contain meta-data as well, in the form of 'Xing' or 'Info' data (both are the same, apart from the signature).
• Trailing meta-data follows the actual MP3 stream. I have observed three types:
  • ID3V1 tags
  • APE tags (APETAGEX)
  • Lyrics tags.

While the order appears to be fixed, these tags occur in various combinations. Some of them may be considered obsolete, but some files only contain "obsolete" meta-information so it is still relevant for identification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbakels (talk • contribs) 15:20, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The lemma text says "Lyrics3 is always on the end of a MP3 file, after the IDV1 tag". ID3.ORG however says that the lyrics precede the ID3V1 tag, in and the (few) MP3 files I have seen with lyics, the ID3V1 tag indeed followed the Lyrics. Rbakels (talk) 00:35, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

ROMS

What is ROMS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.36.39.182 (talk) 07:18, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Good catch! I have changed it to "ROMs" since this is most likely a plural form rather than a 4-letter-abbreviation. However, it could still mean various things in a statement as vague. Console ROMs with firmware, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs? Since I cannot answer this question, I have added a clarification needed tag. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:57, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

It's certainly talking about GAME ROMs ripped from game disks, for use with emulation software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.186.216.189 (talk) 20:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

ID3v2.4 use of TDRC and TDRL tags

In the ID3v2.3 specification the TYER, TDAT and TIME tags are used to store the date of the "recording", and the TRDA 'Recording Dates' tag also exists explicitly to store details of the recording dates. In practical implementations of id3v2.3 in tagging software, the TYER, TDAT and TIME fields are used to store the Release Date (date that the album or song was published) rather than the date that the performer recorded the track.

When the ID3v2.4 specification was published, the changes document stated that the TYER, TDAT, TIME and TRDA fields were replaced by TDRC (recording date), rather than saying that TYER, TDAT and TIME fields were replaced by TRDL and TRDA by TRDC which would have better reflected the actual usage of TYER etc. in real products. I believe that this was a mistake of interpretation, taking the use of "recording" to mean "recording date" rather than "recording publication date". Unfortunately, authors of music taggers and players decided to follow the definition in the changes document and use TDRC to store the release date, resulting in TDRL being unused and no tag field now available in id3v2.4 to store the recording date.

I believe that this issue should be highlighted in the ID3 wikipedia page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paf uk (talk • contribs) 14:55, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

References

Negerpunk

What is Negerpunk [2]? --Abdull 12:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

It is a derogatory, racist term, see https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?t=3924. "Neger" is the (not necessarily derogative) Dutch and German word for a black person of African origin. Rbakels (talk) 06:13, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

What has negerpunk (N*ggerpunk) to do with this? TJ Lusitanias (talk) 15:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

It is mentioned because it was part of the list provided by Winamp. Alexis Wilke (talk) 20:21, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Negerpunk is also a redirect to this article (before the article got deleted). TJ Lusitanias (talk) 15:51, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I removing the link. I don't think there is a need for it. Alexis Wilke (talk) 20:21, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Primary Source Offline since November 24 2021 (as of July 5 2023)

The primary source for ID3, at ID3.org has been inaccessible since approximately November 24 2021.

That appears to be is the last complete snapshot currently available on Archive.org, with no internal dead links within the snapshot.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211118142208/https://id3.org/Home

The Library of Congress uses the February 2007 version of this ID3 wikipedia article as a (primary? secondary?) source for the specification of the ID3v2.x formats.

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000108.shtml

Should all links in this ID3 article be updated to point to that "Wayback Machine" snapshot? Jmonti824 (talk) 05:12, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Came here to suggest the same thing, as of July 5th, 2023 it is still offline. Cathcam (talk) 19:45, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

As I am writing this (July 22nd, 2024), ID3.org is online. Peter Placzek (talk) 16:37, 22 July 2024 (UTC)