MP3 ID3 Tags - MP3 Editor Tags - MP3 Playlists

MP3 and other audio compression formats are favoured because they greatly decrease the storage requirements for audio files. These compression formats make it possible for a tiny portable MP3 player to carry thousands of songs.

In addition to the compression, MP3 has another big advantage. The MP3 format can store details about the music including the title, the artist, the album, the year, the genre and much more. This information is displayed as the song plays and can be used to organize your music collection and find songs rapidly.

MP3 ID3 Tags

The development of ID3 tags started in 1996 and was a way of including metadata in an MP3 file. The original specification allowed the song title, artist, album, year, comments, track number and genre to be added to the end of the file.

The original ID3 format was expanded to ID3 version 2 to allow more details to be included in the tag. Besides this extra information, ID3 Version 2 has a number of additional advantages. For one, ID3 Version 2 is situated at the start of the MP3 file instead of at the end as in the original ID3 . This makes it suitable for streaming which is the ability to be able to play the file as it downloads rather than wait until the whole file has been downloaded.

ID3 Version 2 can show all of the data of the original ID3 format as well as extra fields for the composer, conductor, media type and copyright message. With its ability to be expanded to almost any length, it is possible to include virtually any information that the user desires.

It is also possible to utilise an MP3 file for Karaoke as the tag can also include song lyrics. Because ID3 Version 2 supports Unicode (the near universal encoding format for world languages lyrics and other information can be displayed in almost any language.

Although ID3 tags were specifically designed for the MP3 format, other audio formats such as WMA and AAC can also include metadata which has equivalent characteristics to ID3 tags.

MP3 Tag Editor Software

Metadata can be edited manually, but if you possess thousands of MP3 files that is going to be a daunting job. Thankfully, the procedure can be automated. Most MP3 tag editor software can download metadata from the Internet and update the tags automatically.

MP3 Playlists

Another big advantage of MP3 files is the facility to organize your music collection into playlists . These are merely lists of songs to be played sequentially or randomly, so you can build a program of songs to create a particular mood, similar to what a radio disc jockey does.

Even though playlists are not specific to MP3 files most MP3 tag editor software designed for building and editing metadata also has a playlist function. This makes it easy to organize songs by genre, by year or by any other criteria.

Playlists can also be put together on portable audio players themselves. Most popular MP3 players such as the Apple iPod let you to add songs to a playlist on-the-fly .

Once your playlists are built and organized, merely load one of them into your MP3 player and the songs will play as specified. This is a great feature for organizing your favorite songs and to create musical moods to suit the users tastes.