Mp3 Year tag duplicated / setting Publisher tag

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

When I export to MP3 I am presented with various default Tags. They include Tags like ‘Artist Name’ and ‘Track Title’. One of them is ‘Year’. When I view the exported Mp3 using a ‘Kid3’ the tag’ Year’ appears twice as if some how it has been duplicated by Audacity. If I view the mp3 in notepad I see the date in the file header twice. If I view the MP3 from the application Mp3Tag, then I can see the Year 1990 is presented as 1990\1990

In addition to this, I tried to add an additional tag ‘Publisher’, which appears to be OK, but for what ever reason it is not treated a ‘proper’ Publisher tag. By that I mean, I can see the Publisher tag in Kid3, but it is not read by other applications, for example rekordbox. I have tried to view the tags in some sort of raw format and I can see that when I view using a tool called Altap Salamander, it shows the ‘Publisher’ as ‘custom text’ with the tag ‘Publisher’ as part of the data, not the tag itself. If I add the tag Publisher via Kid3 then rekordbox sees it and if I view the Mp3 file via Altap Salamander, I get 2 tags visible:

  • Publisher: Test
  • Customer text: Publisher - Test
    I guess that Publisher is referenced by Id and not the actual label ‘Publisher’.


    So 2 questions…
  • Why is the year duplicated? Is this a bug?
  • Is there a way to set the Publisher in the export from Audacity so I don’t have to open the MP3 in Kid3 or some other MP3 tag tool and set it from there?
2

The short answer is that except for some of the more recently developed formats (such as Ogg and Flac), there’s little consistency or agreement among software manufacturers about tag standards. “ID3v1” was a ratified standard for MP3 tags, but nobody uses that. “ID3v2” is a proposed standard, but everyone has their own version of it (not really a “standard”), so compatibility from one app to another is limited.

Audacity’s support for metadata tags is limited to the 7 most commonly supported tags, plus optional custom tags. All other tags are ignored.

Probably not a bug. My guess is that you imported a file that already had a year tag, but a different one to what Audacity uses, so that you now have that original tag, plus the one that you put there with Audacity.

Only as a “custom tag”, not as a “proper” Publisher tag. ID3v2 does specify a “TPUB” tag (track publisher), but it is not supported by Audacity.

3

Thanks for taking the time to respond. The Mp3s I am exporting are recordings of vinyl, there is no original imported file, effectively they are original recordings. The Year field is only shown once when I export. But as it seems I have to edit in Kid3 to add the Publisher anyway, it is hardly an effort to delete the 2nd Year instance.

Thanks…