Windows 7/Media Player 12 corrupts custom fields in MP3s’ ID3v2.3 tags, Was—Corrupted metadata/Appreciate any help finding the cause [specify] Options

[metal_termite]

From time to time for the last few years about 100-200 of my MP3s get randomly corrupted metadata and I have no idea what is causing it. Could it be Windows 7, foobar2000, or what?

I do know there are certain patterns. For instance, it seems that only custom tags are the one's getting corrupted (eg. ADDED, THEME, RATING, MOOD, STYLE, etc.). When these tags get corrupted, they always show the same tag values containing a truncated incomplete version of the tag name (eg. When the STYLE tag gets corrupted the new STYLE tag value will always be "TYLE"). I've provided two screen shots as an example.

foobar2000 properties dialog with correct metadata


foobar2000 properties dialog with corrupted metadata

[Peter]

I've had exactly the same happen repeatedly to my music collection, in the following scenarios:
* MP3 music stored in a Windows 7 indexed music library folder, Windows Media Player started.
* MP3 music stored on a data partition of Windows Home Server 2011, media sharing feature enabled (which it is by default!)

Now I'm seriously considering switching my personal collection back to old good APE tags (that MS software doesn't recognize) or using another format than MP3 (again something that MS doesn't support).

[Porcus]

Now I'm seriously considering switching my personal collection back to old good APE tags (that MS software doesn't recognize) or using another format than MP3 (again something that MS doesn't support).

What about storing each album as a .7z archive (which MS-Windows does not see through), and using foo_unpack_7z ? This assumes, though, that you are willing to ditch WMP and rather use foobar2000 as media player

(That «another format» might of course be mka – then no transcoding is needed.)