MP3: The Definitive Guide

ID3 Tags and Playlists: The Virtual Database

ID3 tags and playlists are two of the most important extended topics for people who take their MP3 collections seriously. Taken separately, both technologies are important in their own right, but taken together, these two functions can complement one another in very powerful ways, giving you the means to sort, store, organize, name, and build highly customized virtual collections. Because these two technologies are so synergistic, and because many tools exist to help you organize both of them simultaneously, we’ll treat both of them together in this section.

What Are ID3 Tags?

Every MP3 file has the ability to store "meta-data” related to the track in the file itself, in the form of what are known as “ID3 tags.” For example, a file’s ID3 tags may store the song’s artist, album, year, genre, and comments in ID3 tags. Many MP3 players have the ability to read ID3 data out of your files, and to display this information in the MP3 playback interface. Thus, giving your MP3 files descriptive names isn’t the only—or even necessarily the best—way to identify the tracks in your collection.

Conveniently, ID3 tag information can either be included in the file at the time it’s encoded or added in later. Most of the better encoders will provide a number of options to let you control whether and how ID3 tag data should be written to the file. While some MP3 players include the ability to edit, as well as to display ID3 tag information, you may want ...