User-Defined Fields & Extended Fields

Support
1

Although very experienced in CD-A ripping and burning, I am new to the world of mp3 and file tagging. I have learned to convert my WAV files to mp3 using LAME, and I am very pleased with how nicely mp3Tag batch extracts tag info from my filenames into the ID3 tags. I hope to use the tag information to make Smart Playlists for my new iPod.

I know only the rudiments of ID3 tagging, and also very little about how iTunes works. I would like to be able to make Smart Playlists based on the month and year a song was popular. While the conventional fields in an ID3 tag have a place for a year, there is no designated field for a month. Now, I suppose I could simply use the "Track #" field for the month (I don't plan on storing track numbers).

But I would still like to learn if it is possible to create a new field in the mp3Tag, just for "month." (And, in the future, I might have other new types of metadata to record.) I wonder if this is possible to do. And I wonder if it is possible to create such a new field using mp3Tag. In this forum and elsewhere, I read about "User-Defined Fields" and "Extended Fields," but I'm not quite sure what these terms mean. To me, "User-Defined Field" sounds like a field that I can design/create myself, and add it to the tag. But perhaps I am mistaken.

Can someone help me:
(1) Understand the above terminology
(2) Learn about adding new fields to an ID3 tag
(3) Explain how to do so, either with mp3Tag, or with something else?

Thanks for any help/advice you can offer. I have spent hours reading this forum and others, but was unable to find my answers. Perhaps I was just not knowledgeable enough to recognize them.

2

A tagging system usually has a set of predefined standard fields that can hold the basic informations of a song.
Like Artist, Title, Album, Track, ...
And often also some more fields like Publisher or whatever.
But it is limited.
So "User-Defined Field" are also possible. Which just means you choose the name yourself and also the purpose.
But custom fields are not supported by a lot of programs, therefore you are limited to certain programs .

How to create such a field in Mp3tag:
Just select a file, press Alt+t click on the :mt_new: and enter your desired name (i.e. Month) in Field
You can also create a new column with the value %month% or add it to the tag-panel on the left.

For your Smart Playlist you probably cannot use a "User-Defined Field" field so you should hijack one of iTunes standard fields like Composer or Grouping