Thursday, 02 May 2019
What are MP3 ID3 tags? Should I bother with them?
Yes.
If you are ripping your own CDs then most ripper/encoders will add the information to the tags for you and will even look up the information from CDDB or freedb so you don’t have to type in a thing. Check the settings and/or help files if you aren’t sure how the software you are using does this.
If you are adding ID3 tags to files you downloaded that don’t already have them or have wrong or incomplete tags, there are a number of tagging applications, many of them will do freedb look-ups of whole albums and fill in a lot of the fields, most will allow you to fill in a whole CD full of Artist or Album or other repetitive field with one entry. Check the Utilities Page for links to some.
You do have two choices, ID3V1 and ID3V2*. Either one is good as long as the information in them is complete and correct.
