So I have been debating wheter or not to remove all my ID3 tags. First if I do so will it return the mp3 files to original size as if tag was never present? Also, if either burn mp3s to a CD or load onto an mp3 player without tags, but in folders genre/artist/year - album/track.title.mp3 like on my HD will I be able to sort that way? Or do I need to have tags to sort on mp3 players?

Hi.

If you remove tag info from MP3 files, it will not automatically return the files to their original (unpadded) size as the padding for the tag header (4 kbytes in the case of ID3v2) will still exist, though the padding region will be empty. I'm not sure how to recover this space by removing the padding. If you're wanting to "recover storage capacity" by doing this, consider that 4KB is not much space compared to an MP3 file of, say, 4 MB, even if you're talking about many files (~0.1% capacity difference).

As for how a portable or car MP3 player will read/sort your music without tag info...it depends on the player. The Music Keg in my car, for instance, will read and display the filename of music files (MP3, Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, WMA) if there is no tag info present, but will not enable SSA (searching and sorting by artist/album/genre) as that's done entirely with tag info. Different players may do this differently, but it would seem logical that if a player sees no tag info, then it should at least read and show the filename.

Most players, AFAIK, will not sort based on the directory structure your music is stored in (and believe me, I've wished for this feature myself on some players). But a few players may be able to actually do this. You can do research on the websites of specific player manufacturers for more info, plus there are independant sites on the web as well that may provide additional insight, and also someone may respond in this thread who's more knowledgeable/experienced than I.

Not true (at least in theory )
The padding is part of the ID3v2 tag and will be removed when you remove the tag.

At least that's how it's supposed to work, and in 99% of the cases it works perfectly, but there have been some brain-damaged taggers out there (which are partly responsible for ID3v2's tarnished reputation) that leave garbage between the end of the ID3v2 tag and the beginning of the MP3 data (which is most definitely not the way it's supposed to be) - in this case removing the ID3v2 tag may even cause the MP3 to no longer be recognized as an MP3 (depending on the sophistication of the player).

But any MP3s that are tagged with any decent tagging program will be identical to their pre-tagged state if you remove the ID3v2 tag.

ID3v1 and APE taggers are generally more robust, and will also return the file to its original state once removed.

However, as ScorLibran said, the space saved by removing tags is generally minimal (~0.1% unless you have embedded pictures, then it might be ~1%), and might even be nil depending on the filesystem on which it's stored.

Ah...Thank you, I stand corrected. The last time I tried this was after using either PhatNoise Music Manager or Window Media Mangler (v9) to tag MP3s, and then after removing all tag info I didn't see any filesize difference (but I can't remember exactly which program this occurred with).

I'm glad to hear the better ID3 tagging programs actually remove the padding area.

I wasn't too wooried about space saving, just about corrupt files. I have read various threads about the evils of ID tags and have been wondering if I should leave all new rips untagged and just use a directory structure for sorting and to remove the tags from all my current mp3s. Or if I should continue to use IDv2 tags as I have been because I haven't had any real problems, yet. Or at least not any that I can tell.

Some people say use ape or encode using vorbis or another method, but that isn't practical. I don't just sit in front of my compute rto listen to music. I want to play it in the living room, in teh car, and while out on teh raod with and ipod or similar device.