Editing ID3 (section)

==ID3v1==
When the MP3 standard was published in 1995, it did not include a method for storing file metadata. In 1996 Eric Kemp{{clarify|date=June 2023|reason=Who is he?}} 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. Kemp deliberately placed the tag data (which is demarcated with the 3-byte string {{code|TAG}}) at the end of the file as it would cause a short burst of [[White noise|static]] to be played by older  [[Media player (software)|media players]] that did not support the tag. The method, now known as ID3v1, quickly became the ''de facto'' standard for storing metadata in MP3s<ref name="id3origin">[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bby4FJy49QUC&pg=PA335 Practical Common Lisp], p. 335.</ref> despite [[internationalization and localization]] weaknesses arising from the standard's use of [[ISO-8859-1]] system of encoding rather than the more globally compatible [[Unicode]].

The v1 tag allows 30 bytes each for the title, artist, album, and a "comment", 4 bytes for the year, and 1 byte to identify the [[genre]] of the song from [[List of ID3v1 genres| a predefined list of values]].<ref name="ID3.org v1">{{cite web |url=http://id3.org/ID3v1 |title=ID3v1 – ID3.org |website=id3.org |access-date=2018-04-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150620033655/http://id3.org/ID3v1 |archive-date=2015-06-20}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=ID3 Genre List |url=https://eyed3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugins/genres_plugin.html}}</ref>

===ID3v1.1===
In 1997, a modification to ID3v1 was proposed by Michael Mutschler{{clarify|date=June 2023|reason=Who is he?}} 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. The modified format became known as ID3v1.1.<ref name="id3origin" />

=== ID3v1.2 ===
In 2002 or 2003,{{which|date=June 2023}} BirdCage Software proposed ID3v1.2, which enlarged many of the fields from 30 to 60 bytes and added a sub-genre field while retaining backward compatibility with v1.1 by placing its new "enhanced" tag in front of a standard v1.1 tag.<ref name="BirdCage">{{cite web |url=http://www.birdcagesoft.com/ID3v12.txt |title=ID3v1.2}}</ref><ref name="enhanced tag">{{cite web |url=http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/sonic/3/id3tag.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120310015458/http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/sonic/3/id3tag.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2012-03-10 |title=MP3 TAG & Enhanced TAG description (english) |date=2012-03-10 |access-date=2018-04-12}}</ref> Adoption of ID3v1.2 was limited.{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}