ID3 Tag versions?

Hey can someone help me out with this one... I am wondering what the difference is between the different ID3 tag versions available in iTunes. If anyone knows this or where i can find more info on this it would be greatly appreciated. Couldnt really find another topic that explained this one...

wikipedia has an explanation, but I don't know who inputs that wki stuff...ther is a proper & former ID3 tag forum that is more difficult to read. Google on it.
My unofficial advice is to use v2.3 for iTunes.

Similar Messages

What ID3 Tag version is ok for Sleek and MediaSour

Hi,
I've ripped all my music in iTunes, included album art and converted all to ID3 Tag version 2.4. The import wizard for the player/MediaSource isn't geting any useful info my songs though, now that I have a Sleek, such as album, artist etc. What do I do? I've 25 GB of music meticulously stored up and now I can't use it properly until MediaSource can import the tag info into its database!!
What ID3 Tag version is ok?
Is there anything else I can do?
Any other help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Gav

Hi guys,
I got it to work, thanks to yourself Mr Mouse.
It appears that MediaSource and the Sleek import wizard WILL NOT read ID3 v2.4 tags but the wizard WILL read v2.3 tags, when they have been created in iTunes. To solve the problem I converted my entire music library from v2.4 to v2.3 using the same iTunes menu action thingie I used to make them all 2.4 in the first place, as was suggested to me.
The mp3s are transferring as we speak and so far all is good.
I was really worried all that music would be unusable but fortuantely the above worked. It looks like creative are behind in implementing ID3v2.4 support. Their products are always fantastic, the sound always incredible but the softare always lagging.....
The documentation and FAQ should make specific mention to the ID3 tag versions supported, it would be helpful.
Thanks for the help,
Gav.

Which ID3 tag version does iTunes use?

I'm doing some tag editing and I see that I have many different tag types. Which ones are important to iTunes? Are any of them obsolete?

CDs you rip with itunes have v2.2 tags.
The industry standard is to use v2.3.
http://www.id3.org/
As far as I know, none of them are obsolete, exactly. However, most folks expect artwork and v1 tags don't support art.

Converted the id3 tags of my entire library, now stuck with duplicates of everything. can i sort by id3 tag version or something to easily delete duplicates?

help!!!
i have about 6000 tracks that just became 12000

Hold down the SHIFT key and then select File > Display Exact Duplicates. This gives a list of all tracks where more than one track has essentially the same metadata, name, track no., artist, album, etc. Actually, if you know everything has been doubled then I guess you skip that step...
If the duplicates have been recently added into your library as a job lot then you can sort the list on the date added column, select a range of tracks with SHIFT-click and delete all the recent entries. Please check however that there really are two copies of each file before deciding whether to delete the files as well as the entries from the database - get it wrong and you could delete your entire library!
For more thoughts on this topic see this recent post.
tt2

How do i get all the tags i see in the iTunes library to be the ID3 tags?

I have a huge collection of mp3 in iTunes (the latest version), and they are all perfectly organized, but when i open those mp3 files in any other player i see old tags or no tags, because the id3 tags on the mp3 files are not the same as the ones i see on itunes. I've tried the "convert id3 tags" tool but it does not seem to help. How do i get the id3 tags to be the same as iTunes tags?

+HEy any reason why you pick version 2.3,+
itunes didn't work well with 3rd-party plugins and v2.4, and former forum regular Otto told me to use v2.3
+what is the difference between the different id3 tag versions..+
read up on it using google

Are anyone else's ID3 tags all jacked up after upgrading to iTunes 11?

I have a large library that I'm downright OCD in managing tag information. All are set at v2.4 and genres, album artist, groups, both track and cd #'s as well as album art have been MANUALLY scrubbed religiously upon import to ensure a manageable library. I've noticed in the past that iTunes does a fairly horrible job in actually changing the ID3 tag info of the AAC or MP3 file itself resulting in horrible tag info when using the files in another system (Chrysler's MyGig system, Microsoft's Sync system, etc.) but iTunes always listed the songs correctly, making my smart playlists, sort and playback very easy and clean. That is until I upgraded to iTunes 11. Apparently they've re-read all the file ID3 tag info as I now have MANY different genres listed and album artist info has disappeared as well as track listing info. Do I need to get an external tag editor and redo all the tag editing I had done previously to now clean this up or have they fixed iTunes to do a better job of actually editing the file info itself?

Get Info on the song within iTunes is how I know the comment field is empty.
I don't have Match or iCloud enabled.
All other tag info is there and left untouched, only the comment field is blank. Tried removing and re-adding the tracks multiple times, but that didn't help.
Reason this annoys me is that I add information to my comment field such as additional genre/style information, band origin or location, related artists, etc. Very helpful stuff for smart playlists.
I can try Stephen Spark's suggestion to convert my ID3 tag version, but I've never, ever had to do that before, so, if iTunes 11 is suddenly only reliably reads one correctly it seems to be a bug with iTunes.

ID3 tags that look fine in iTunes are ungood on the iPod touch

I've got 60,000-plus MP3 tracks, collected over a decade, that were encoded by a variety of apps on Macs and PCs. The tracks look OK in iTunes on a Mac, but on an iPod touch, many songs are missing artwork, and others display the lyrics in garbled "mojibake" characters.
If the garbling occurred in all the ID3 tags (Name, Artist, Album, etc.) of a track instead of just the lyrics tag, I'd simply reverse the unicode; but as it's not, the solution has to force the misbehaving ID3 tags/artwork to display correctly. I've tried selecting the problem songs and reassigning the ID3 tag, but iTunes can't or won't overwrite the bad tags.
What does work as a solution is toggling the ID3 tags off and on by selecting the bad tracks in iTunes, right-clicking and choosing "Convert ID3 Tags...", then assigning "None" as the ID3 tag version. Next step is to select "Convert ID3 Tags..." again, this time choosing v2.3 or v2.4 as the ID3 version. That does the trick every time, stripping away corruption in the ID3 tags and forcing the tracks to accept artwork. However, it also truncates tags longer than 30 characters, and deletes existing lyrics and artwork. That makes for a lot of cleanup editing.
Is there a way to make iTunes assign ID3 v2.3 to tracks so as to overwrite the corrupt tags without going through the steps I've outlined? If not, is there an app out there with the mojo to fix these corrupt files?

If the song is in iTunes, and it is in a playlist that you auto-sync your Touch to, then the only things that might cause this problem are:
1- Is this new song un-checked in iTunes? If your Touch is set to sync only checked items that would prevent it from syncing. If that's the case, just enable the checkmark next to the new song and re-sync.
2- Is this playlist a smart playlist that is forced to be limited in size? If so, there is a bug with the 3.1.x OS such that smart playlists that are limited in size will have different contents (and sorted differently) when you compare the playlist on iTunes vs. on the Touch. The solution in this case is to disable Live Updating in the smart playlist definition, then the two versions of the playlist will agree.
3- Is the new song tagged as "Skip when Shuffling"? If so, and if your Touch is in shuffle mode, then the song count in the playlist will not include songs that are designated to be skipped.
See if any of those three things are what is going on. If not, then perhaps you need to reset or restore your Touch, but I doubt that.

ITunes ID3 tags handling for artwork

I have created MP3 versions of my band's artwork for inclusion in an online radio. I am running into some issues with ID3 tags.    The MP3s show the artwork and everything just fine on my Mac. However the artwork doesn't show up in the radio software (Centova) when the files are uploaded. Because of this, I've got a crash course in ID3 tags--at least the album artwork tags.
It turns out, in ID3 tags version 2, there are no less than 15 different ID3 tags reserved for artwork--meaning you can attach up to 15 separate pieces of artwork (in theory) to each MP3 file. Here are the tag reservations:
$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
Yes, you read that right, there's a tag for "A bright colored fish". So here's the rub: I'm finding that iTunes defaults album artowrk to the first position (00), which has a certain logic to it. But, I'm finding that this radio software, and some other pro level software looks for cover art in the third tag (Cover Art) be default. This makes a number of problems. It means that I'm having to find a serious ID3 tag editor to change the iTunes artowork tag from "00-Other" to "03-Cover Art" in order for it to be properly displayed.
NOW THE QUESTION: Does iTunes have any sort of method to select which "type" of cover atwork tag you want to apply to the added artwork? Or am I at the mercy of iTunes' default designation and that's that?

Apple have this help, which I guess you will have seen:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1468
There is a very comprehensive discussion of the issue in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8180252#8180252

Car Menu Music Player - ID3 Tags

Hello,
I am using the car menu v2.6 on my E51. I am wondering which ID3-Tag version is supported. Does anybody know that?
What about v2.8 beta, which versions are supported here?
Thanks,
Jones

Hi Diavonex. Yes I was aware of this option.
Subsequently I have done a litle research and downloaded a music app called "Track 8" which has a much clearer interface (larger type) and the abillity to change the background colour to dark or light.
This is much more readable in the car in bright light, and much better at night too.
You can also turn off auto-lock within the application, which is great, as it doesn't affect other apps.
Although this app is really only an interface sitting on top of the music app, it offers a much better experience
in my opinion that the stock player which seems to have devolved rather than evolved.

Problems with ID3 Tags in iTunes - Desperate need of assistance!

Hello all...
Desperately need some help. I just spent a very (very) long time going through my entire music collection making sure all album art is present and all tags are corrected to my preferences. Now I want to back up the entire drive (F: drive, I keep my music on a separate drive) to a new hard drive (H: drive). However, in the process I've noticed that not all the changes that I made to the tags have actually saved to the tags themselves, even though they continue to display correctly in iTunes. If I load them into another application or reload them into iTunes from the new drive, not all the tag changes I made in iTunes are showing up. It seems iTunes is perhaps storing this tag info in some kind of internal database? To be specific I am not talking about meta-data like ratings and number of times played. I'm talking about artist, genre, etc.
So my question is this: is there some way to force iTunes to save the data that is currently displayed in iTunes to the ID3 tags?
I've also been disappointed to find out that when adding album artwork, iTunes does not actually save the artwork to the ID3 tags as I assumed. Any way I can force iTunes to do that?
Lastly, if neither of the above are possible, is there an easy way to backup the iTunes database so that all my tags and artwork are present once I remove the current drive and re-load my collection into iTunes from the new drive? Will the change of path prevent me from being able to backup the database?

Hi Ed, thanks for responding so quickly. Yes, they are mp3 files, and yes, I had assumed what you told me, that changes made in iTunes would be made to the mp3 files. I also thought it could have something to do with read only, so I made sure that the files were not read only. But yes, strangely enough, even though the tags show up properly in iTunes, they do not show up properly in other players, and don't show up properly in iTunes if I remove the album, copy the album to the second drive, and load it back into iTunes (only for a portion of the files, but with the size of my collection this would still be time consuming to fix). I don't understand it either, but from research I have done online, it may have something to do with an iTunes glitch relating to the ID3 tag version.
Regardless of how it is supposed to work or what the explanation is, the situation now stands that my tags display perfectly in iTunes but are not all saved to the files perfectly. So I am hoping there is some way I can force iTunes to save the current state of tag info to the files!
About the 2 drives, it's simple. Right now my collection is on F:, and loaded into iTunes, but I want to get rid of that drive as it is IDE and too small, and store my collection on H: instead. I'm just really worried that after moving my collection and reloading into iTunes I will need to re-tag and re-load album artwork all over again. Any tips?

ITunes won't read ID3 tags that Windows sees

I recently switched my library over from a Mac laptop to a PC desktop. I have about 70 GB of perfectly organized music accumulated over years and years.
In the process, after I loaded some songs into iTunes (using the Keep My iTunes Folder Organized and all that stuff), I noticed that about 10 GB of music were without titles, artists, or album info, and just displayed the name of the MP3 file (so like instead of displaying 15 Step by Radiohead from In Rainbows, Track 1 it displayed "01 15 Step" in the Title column only).
The problem is that when I navigate to these songs in Windows Explorer, not only do I see all of the correct ID3 information, I see the extras like Album Art have loaded perfectly as well. I can play these songs in Windows Media Player and the ID3 info is perfect.
Does anyone know why iTunes won't read these ID3 tags or how to get iTunes to read them?

I am also having the same problem with about 200 of my MP3s. The tag info shows up perfectly using QuickLook on Leopard, but in iTunes I can't see any of the info. I have tried converting the ID3 tag version, revesing the unicode....nothing.
Have you had any luck?

How to edit the song information contained in the ID3 tags?

Hello!
I am a newbie to Mac. I used to change the ID3 tags of songs when using Windows by right clicking on 'Properties' and changing the values there. How to do the same on my Mac? I saw only one option related to ID3 tags in iTunes' interface - 'Advanced >> Convert ID3 Tags...'. I clicked on it, checked 'ID3 tag version:' and selected 'v2.4' from the drop down list. It does not work.
So, how do I do it?
Thank you!
MacBook Pro 17" Mac OS X (10.4.6) Memory upgraded to 2GB

The iTunes Help Menu as well as the forums is a great resource for information about iTunes and "how to".
From the iTunes Help Menu:
Editing song information:
When you're connected to the Internet, you can retrieve information about the songs on a CD from Gracenote CDDB (CD database) on the Internet. You can also enter song information into iTunes yourself, or change the information that was retrieved.
1. Select the song you want to edit, then choose File > Get Info.
2. Click Info.
3. Make your changes to the song information, then click OK.
By default, changing information in iTunes also changes the name of the song on your hard disk. To make changes in iTunes without changing the files on your hard disk, choose iTunes > Preferences, then click the Advanced button and click General. Then click to remove the checkmark next to Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized.
You can also make global changes by selecting a group of songs the key board short cut of CMD-I (Apple Key +I).
MJ

ID3 tag information not showing up on imported files

I've only had my iPod for a couple of days and I'm working right now on importing all my computer's mp3 files into iTunes, using "add folder to library." Most of the time it's going fine, but for some files the ID3 information will not show up for no apparent reason when it is definitely there (it shows up fine in Winamp etc)--sometimes it will even be only a few songs in a folder with the others working! I have no idea what to do, and when I search the forums all I can find is other people having the same problem but no answers. Someone help please?
Dell Inspiron 1501 Windows XP

In iTunes, select all the songs.
Go to menu Advanced -> Convert ID3 tags.
Select ID3 tag version: V2.2.

On import, lost many id3 tags

Using an iPod and iTunes for the first time. Imported my music into iTunes (leaving the files where they are). Of the ~3600 songs, 744 have lost their id3 tags. iTunes knows the name, but not the artist, album, genre, track number.
If I look directly at the file properties in Windows Explorer, or if I look at the files in Winamp, all that info exists.
Please tell me I don't have to type that all in. Any easy way to fix?

I have tried some programs for tag - repair/rename/etc, but none of them can read properly all info from mp3 file. Some of them find picture in file, but they have problem with loading it (pictures looks like bad modern art . Others find picture and ID3v1, but have problem with ID3v2...
At last, I have tried something in iTunes: right-click on file with tag problem, „Convert ID3 tags...“, on dialog box check „ID3 tag version“ and after „OK“, everything is OK.

Cant change ID3 tags [on certain files]

Some files I have, after making changes to their tags in iTunes, revert to their original tag info upon playing. Very annoying [especially when/if file contains faulty info].
I have gone as far as changing the file info in the Finder, with no success. In fact, I can picture scenarios where this would result in a 'missing' file in iTunes. Even if this method were to work, I would only classify it as a workaround - not a soultion, by any means.
All apologies if this issue has been addressed already. I am running iTunes 4.9, but the problem was first noticed under 4.7 [i believe].
Thanks in advance,
-af-

I had the same problem with some mp3 files that I downloaded. Couldn't change the tag names, and couldn't add album artwork.
From another post on a seperate topic in relation to the ID3 tags, I think I found an answer that worked for me.
Select the songs in iTunes, go to Advanced and then "Convert ID3 Tags..."
Then put a check in the ID3 tag version and make sure that the version is "none". Click OK to change the ID3 tags.
This clears the ID3 version number, but keeps the data. Then go back through the same process but change the ID3 tag version to the original ID3 tag version (2.2, 2,3, etc).
As I said, this worked for me, so I hope this works for you.

ID3 Tag versions?

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