Compliance

ID3

Unsupported Features

  • ID3 frame encryption

  • Writing of sync-safe data (i.e. unsynchronized) because it is 2012. Reading of unsyncronized tags (v2.3) and frames (v2.4) is supported.

Dates

One of the major differences between 2.3 and 2.4 is dates.

ID3 v2.3 Date Frames

  • TDAT date (recording date of form DDMM, always 4 bytes)

  • TYER year (recording year of form YYYY, always 4 bytes)

  • TIME time (recording time of form HHMM, always 4 bytes)

  • TORY orig release year

  • TRDA recording date (more freeform replacement for TDAT, TYER, TIME. e.g., “4th-7th June, 12th June” in combination with TYER)

  • TDLY playlist delay (also defined in ID3 v2.4)

ID3 v2.4 Date Frames

All v2.4 dates follow ISO 8601 formats.

  • TDEN encoding datetime

  • TDOR orig release date

  • TDRC recording date

  • TDRL release date

  • TDTG tagging time

  • TDLY playlist delay (also defined in ID3 v2.3)

From the ID3 specs:

yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss (year, "-", month, "-", day, "T", hour (out of
24), ":", minutes, ":", seconds), but the precision may be reduced by
removing as many time indicators as wanted. Hence valid timestamps
are yyyy, yyyy-MM, yyyy-MM-dd, yyyy-MM-ddTHH, yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm
and yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss. All time stamps are UTC. For
durations, use the slash character as described in 8601, and for
multiple non- contiguous dates, use multiple strings, if allowed
by the frame definition.

The ISO 8601 ‘W’ delimiter for numeric weeks is NOT supported.

Times that contain a ‘Z’ at the end to signal the time is UTC is supported.

Common Date Frame Extensions

MusicBrainz uses XDOR in v2.3 tags as the full original release date, whereas TORY (v2.3) only represents the release year. Version 2.4 does not use/need this extension since TDOR is available.

v2.4 <-> 2.3 mappings

When converting to/from v2.3 and v2.4 it is neceswsary to convert date frames. The following is the mappings eyeD3 uses when converting.

Version 2.3 –> version 2.4

  • TYER, TDAT, TIME –> TDRC

  • TORY –> TDOR

  • TRDA –> none

  • XDOR –> TDOR

If both TORY and XDOR exist, XDOR is preferred.

Version 2.4 –> version 2.3

  • TDRC –> TYER, TDAT, TIME

  • TDOR –> TORY

  • TDRL –> TORY

  • TDEN –> none

  • TDTG –> none

Non Standard Frame Support

NCON

A MusicMatch extension of unknown binary format. Frames of this type are parsed as raw Frame objects, therefore the data is not parsed. The frames are preserved and can be deleted and written (as is).

TCMP

An iTunes extension to signify that a track is part of a compilation. This frame is handled by TextFrame and the data is either a ‘1’ if part of a compilation or ‘0’ (or empty) if not.

XSOA, XSOP, XSOT

These are alternative sort-order strings for album, performer, and title, respectively. They are often added to ID3v2.3 tags while v2.4 does not require them since TSOA, TSOP, and TSOT are native frames.

These frames are preserved but are not written when using v2.3. If the tag is converted to v2.4 then the corresponding native frame is used.

XDOR

A MusicBrainz extension for the full original release date, since TORY only contains the year of original release. In ID3 v2.4 this frame became TDOR.

PCST, WFED, TKWD, TDES, TGID

Apple extensions for podcasts.