Lyrics3

The Lyrics3 tagging standard was originally written by Peter Strnad in ancient times. The Lyrics3 spec was designed to overcome the deficiencies of the ID3v1 spec, just like ID3v2. The major difference between the two was that Lyrics3 tags were placed after the audio data, while ID3v2 tags were placed before the audio data. Back then, humans were busy fighting off frequent dinosaur attacks, so speed was an issue. Having the tags after the audio meant faster write times. In modern times, with more plentiful hard drive space, ID3v2 tags could be padded, eliminating Lyrics3's speed advantage at the cost of disk space.

The earliest mention of Lyrics3 I can find is June 5th, 1998.

Additional Resources

• www.id3.org/lyrics3200.html The most current spec
• www.mpx.cz/mp3manager/tags.htm#Lyrics3Tag Details of Lyrics3 from the author's homepage
• www.mpx.cz/mp3manager/index.htm Peter Strnad's MP3 Manager homepage