The ID3v2 documents
ID3v2.4.0 Main Structure - Plain text document.
ID3v2.4.0 Native Frames - Plain text document.
ID3v2.4.0 Changes - Plain text document.
ID3v2.3.0 Informal standard - Plain text document describing ID3v2.3.0.
ID3v2.3.0 Informal standard - HTML document describing ID3v2.3.0.
ID3v2 Programming Guidelines - What is good and what is ungood.
(ID3v2.2.0 Informal standard - Plain text document describing ID3v2.2.0 - obsolete)
Additional standards
ID3 Chapter Frame Addendum
ID3 Chapter (CHAP) and Table of Contents (CTOC) frames were developed in response to the growth in audio files containing more than one distinct audio program. Podcasts are an example of a single audio file which may contain multiple tracks, stories or other distinct audio entries. The addition of the CHAP and CTOC frames to an ID3 tag will provide compatible players with index information into the audio file.
Version 1.0 of the Chapter Frame Addendum was released on December 2, 2005. CTOC & CHAP frames are compatible with ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 tags.
ID3v2 Chapter Frame Addendum v1.0
ID3 Accessibility Addendum
The ID3 Accessibility Addendum makes ID3 metadata accessible to the visually impaired via a new Audiotext (ATXT) frame type. The addition of ATXT frames to an ID3 tag will allow compatible players to provide an audible description of the ID3 metadata.
Version 1.0 of the Accessibility Addendum was released on November 20, 2006. ATXT frames are compatible with ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 tags.
ID3v2 Accessibility Addendum v1.0
Unofficial Frames Seen in the Wild
These are frames that are not in the specs that programs are writing:
COMM w. desc="iTunNORM": iTunes Normalization settings
RGAD: Replay Gain Adjustment
TCMP: iTunes Compilation Flag
TSO2: iTunes uses this for Album Artist sort order
TSOC: iTunes uses this for Composer sort order
XRVA: Experimental RVA2
ID3 work in progress
Join the ID3v2 mailing list to discuss proposed changes and/or extensions to ID3 tags.
2007-02-03
Jud White released his first Alpha version of IdSharp, a .NET 4.0 tagging library that supports reading and writing 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 tags and converting between the formats. You can find the code at https://github.com/judwhite/IdSharp and the home page at http://www.idsharp.com.
Related standards
ISO 639-2 - Language codes
ISO 4217 - Currency codes
ISO 3901 - International Standard Recording Code
Unicode - The Unicode Consortium (http://www.unicode.org/)
PNG - The PNG Home Page (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/)
zlib - The zlib Home Page (http://www.gzip.org/zlib/)
Example tags
A comprehensive test suite for all versions of ID3 tags are currently under development. The test suite includes both conforming tags and non-conforming tags so that both standards coformance and software robustness can be tested. Part of these will be released as example tags while the rest will be sold to cover development and running expenses. If you are interested, contact Martin Nilsson.
While waiting for the ID3v2 test suite, feel free to try the ID3v1/ID3v1.1 test suite.
ID3v2 logos
The ID3v2 logo is copyright © 1998 Martin Nilsson. You may freely use the ID3v2 logo on pages containing ID3v2 information and in programs supporting the ID3v2 standard.
- The original logo (2.6 kB, 156 x 149)
- A more colourful logo by Attila Sandor Fiko (3.6 kB, 132 x 132)
- A rendered rotating logo by Chris Nunn (44.7 kB, 132 x 132)
- windows icon file by Chuck Zenkus (8.2 kB, 32 x 32 x 16/256, 48 x 48 x 16/256)
id3v2.ico.zip - windows icon (same as above), packaged for downloading for IE.
id3v2.eps - vectorized version by Magnus Hoff (38.1 kB)
id3v2.emf - vectorized version by Magnus Hoff (1.4 kB)