Debra Hadraba

Debra Hadraba’s enhanced CD will provide an MP3 version of the single, “Be Brave, Have Heart,” along with the Braveheart music video, a photo collection and an e-book. Since it is an original recording, never published before, the MP3 version had no metadata to identify the title or the artist.

In 1996 Eric Kemp came up with an MP3 enhancement that added a 128-byte chunk of data to the audio file, one that included tagging information. The standard, known as ID3v1, quickly became the de facto means of storing metadata in MP3s.

ID3 has evolved to provide streaming information and even a 32×32 pixel ‘file icon’ (PNG only) image, as well as the original collection of data that includes: title, artist, album, track number, genre, comment and other information about the file structure.

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There are all sorts of free and for-purchase MP3 tag editors available online. Here are two choices that are both top-rated and free…

Mp3tag is a free, simple and comprehensive tool that will permit you to edit the metadata of your MP3s. It supports all of the common audio formats: ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags.

NCH Software offers Stamp ID3, a free tag editor as a way to entice you to consider a lot of other useful tools they sell.

While these free tag editors are nice to begin with, they are somewhat limited. They do not edit the tags on Wav files, the ones that inform the CD player of artist and title on standard music disc. Tag&Rename from SoftPointer is well worth the $29.95 it costs, because it not only has greater in-depth tagging capabilities and covers every type of audio tag, but it can automate many of the processes simultaneously over a batch of files.