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Topic: ID3 tag for exact dates? (Read 5128 times) previous topic - next topic
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ID3 tag for exact dates?

What do you guys recommend as the best ID3 tag solution for exact dates?

My understanding is that ID3 has both YEAR (TYER) and DATE (TDAT) tags that can be used to identify the date of the musics.

Assume for now that there is no need to make finer distinctions, like date recorded versus issued versus reissued etc (so forget about other tags, like Recording date (TRDA or TDRC) or Time (TIME).

My question: if I want to specify an exact date (i.e. down to the day, not just the year), what tag(s) should I use and what date format?

From searching the web (e.g. this link), I gather that here are some common practices:
  • only specify just the year in the YEAR tag (so give up on exact dates)
  • specify just the year in the YEAR tag, and additionally specify the exact date in the DATE tag
  • only specify the exact date in the YEAR tag, and leave out the DATE tag

I would like to use the simplest solution that has the broadest compatibility.  I think that the final solution above (put exact dates only in the YEAR tag) is the simplest solution, but am not sure about how compatible it is.  Will it break or lead to very strange results in some software (e.g. fb2k, WMP, etc)?

Concerning what date format to use, is ISO 8601 (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD) the best format?  I hope so, as I strongly think that that is the only rational format, which ought to be used everywhere.
 

Re: ID3 tag for exact dates?

Reply #1 –
For ID3v2.3 and older, you'd combine the TYER tag (YYYY) with the TDAT tag (MMDD) and TIME tag (HHMM).

For ID3v2.4, you'd use TDRC or TDRA (or any of the other timestamp frames), with any level of accuracy you want, up to: YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS. Include Year, throw in month, throw in day, add the literal T and throw in hour, minute, second.