ID3

When the MP3 standard was published in 1995, it did not include a method for storing file metadata.

In 1996 Eric Kemp[clarification needed] proposed adding a 128-byte suffix to MP3 files, which would store useful information such as an artist's name or a related album title.

[3][4] In 1997, a modification to ID3v1 was proposed by Michael Mutschler[clarification needed] in which two bytes formerly allocated to the comment field were used instead to store a track number so that albums stored across multiple files could be correctly ordered.

BirdCage Software proposed ID3v1.2, which enlarged many of the fields from 30 to 60 bytes and added a subgenre field while retaining backward compatibility with v1.1 by placing its new "enhanced" tag in front of a standard v1.1 tag.

A ID3v2 tag consists of a number of optional frames, each of which contains a piece of metadata up to 16 MB in size.

[10] Notably it introduced the ability to embed an image such as an album cover.

It allows users to jump easily to specific locations or chapters within an audio file and can provide a synchronized slide show of images and titles during playback.

ID3 tags were designed for the MP3 format, but the tagsets are an independent part of the MP3 file and can be used elsewhere.