windows explorer properties summary music - the year

[Tim]

When you list music files in Windows Explorer, right
click a file and look at the properties, then the summary
tab, on some files you are allowed to input the year so
it will show in the year field if you are displaying that
field. But some files will not allow this field. How can
this be turned on for the files that are not showing this
field? Why don't all files allow all available fields?
I want to be able to sort my music files by year and
without being allowed this field on some files I can not
accomplish this. Can anyone answer this?

[Ray Taylor]

I would expect the information on the summary tab to be reading id3 tags.

An ID3 tag is a special piece of code which is added to the start of an mp3
sound file, which enables programs to use for giving more information about
a song, instead of just using the file name.

Other sound formats such as wave dont use ID3 tags as they do not have the
demmand for any improvments on the technology, and are becoming less and
less popular. When the wave format was designed, they did not have the idea
of such a thing as an ID3 tag and probably didnt work the design format to
accomodate one.

You will find that if you had the file 'bitter sweet symthony.mp3' and
renamed it to '1.mp3', windows media player or many other players will still
show its title and album name etc. as stated in the ID3 tag.



Ray Taylor




"Tim" > wrote in message
...
> When you list music files in Windows Explorer, right
> click a file and look at the properties, then the summary
> tab, on some files you are allowed to input the year so
> it will show in the year field if you are displaying that
> field. But some files will not allow this field. How can
> this be turned on for the files that are not showing this
> field? Why don't all files allow all available fields?
> I want to be able to sort my music files by year and
> without being allowed this field on some files I can not
> accomplish this. Can anyone answer this?