iTunes ID3 MP3 weirdness

April 6, 2004 3:56 PM

What is iTunes putting in my MP3 tags? [mi]

I ripped the new Modest Mouse CD with iTunes, and each file has something like this in its ID3v2 comments tag:

000022C0 00001F1C 0000B69E 0000B37D 0001DA2F 00021EF5 000090A2 0000934B 00033934 0002BFAC

What is that?

posted by punishinglemur to computers & internet (6 comments total)

This was asked yesterday, but found no real answer.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:02 PM on April 6, 2004

See yesterday's AskMefi (not that it's answered there I think, but it does appear to be the same question.)
posted by fvw at 4:02 PM on April 6, 2004

Wow, I totally missed that one.
posted by punishinglemur at 4:11 PM on April 6, 2004

According to this discussions thread on the Apple support site, it's something to do with custom ID3 tags set up by iTunes which are then not being honoured by other programs. Out of interest, what programs have you opened your MP3s in, other than iTunes?

Of course, this only tells you why the data is appearing there, and doesn't answer the question of exactly what this data represents. My guess (and it's only a guess) is it's some kind of internal individual file ID to keep track of syncs across computer/iPod, and/or to store custom iTunes info like Rating, Last Played, Date Added to Library, etc.
posted by chrismear at 4:43 PM on April 6, 2004

I've opened them in WinAmp, and both WinAmp and Windows (file properties dialog) show that in the comments.
posted by punishinglemur at 4:45 PM on April 6, 2004

The best advice I've seen on this is from that Apple support thread, and that's to make your mp3 files read-only.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 5:00 PM on April 6, 2004