ID3

ID3 is a metadata tagging standard typically used to embed metadata in MP3 audio or MP4 video. Most end-users come into contact with ID3 when using software such as Apple's iTunes to catalogue their collections of music files. Although popular, ID3 has a number of inherent limitations. As with the IPTC metadata standard for images, there are a fixed list of fields: title, artist, album, year, genre and comments. It is possible to utilise ID3 by mapping this fixed list to an alternate selection (e.g. 'genre' corresponding to 'category') however, the limitations of this approach when compared with advanced metadata standards such as XMP are apparent. The key advantage of ID3 is the widespread availability of tools that can adjust the tag data and batch process audio or video files. See the official ID3 site for more information.