# Writing BOM with id3v2.4 UTF-8

**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [March 30, 2008, 4:58am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542 "2008-03-30T04:58:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Greg\_G](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f14d63/32.png) [@Greg\_G](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Greg_G)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2008, 4:58am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542/1 "2008-03-30T04:58:42Z")

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Hello,

I'm currently running into a problem with a java mp3 tag library that doesn't seem to be stripping the BOM from either v2.3 or v2.4 tags. However, when researching the problem, I noticed the following in the id3v2.4 spec: Frames that allow different types of text encoding contains a text

```
   encoding description byte. Possible encodings:

     $00 ISO-8859-1 [ISO-8859-1]. Terminated with $00.
     $01 UTF-16 [UTF-16] encoded Unicode [UNICODE] with BOM. All
           strings in the same frame SHALL have the same byteorder.
           Terminated with $00 00.
     $02 UTF-16BE [UTF-16] encoded Unicode [UNICODE] without BOM.
           Terminated with $00 00.
     $03 UTF-8 [UTF-8] encoded Unicode [UNICODE]. Terminated with $00.The way I read this is that BOM should only be used for UTF-16(LE) and that UTF-8, which is what Mp3tag uses for v2.4, should not have a BOM at all.

```

Am I misunderstanding? Would it be possible to optionally disable BOM when writing tags (at least for v2.4) like it can be disabled for exporting tags?

Thank you,  
Greg

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### Author: ![dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/dano/32/6_2.png) [@dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/dano)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2008, 8:56am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542/2 "2008-03-30T08:56:46Z")

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Mp3tag writes id3v2.4 UTF-8 **without** BOM

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### Author: ![Greg\_G](https://community.mp3tag.de/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/f14d63/32.png) [@Greg\_G](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Greg_G)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2008, 1:59pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542/3 "2008-03-30T13:59:10Z")

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> [@dano](#):
>
> Mp3tag writes id3v2.4 UTF-8 **without** BOM

Okay, thank you. I'm sorry for misinterpreting the situation. Since I'm seeing a BOM, it must then be a problem with this tag library I'm using. Thank you for helping me clear that up.

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### Author: ![system](https://community.mp3tag.de/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ce7035d426cb755a7916793326d23b465222a407.png) [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:20pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/writing-bom-with-id3v2-4-utf-8/6542/4 "2026-02-09T12:20:52Z")

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