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# Important changes

This chapter describes important changes and news. Please have a look at the history of changes for a complete list.
Mp3tag is Freeware

In case you like using Mp3tag, please consider donating to support the development of Mp3tag.

# Mp3tag v2.61

## Summer Maintenance

With this version we're doing some summer maintenance and fix issues which were reported during the past weeks.
Please see the history of changes for a complete list.

# Mp3tag v2.60

## Update of Discogs Tag Source

Discogs updated their API which resulted in release information not being retrieved while using the discogs tag source. The access to the Discogs API has been fixed with this release.

## Internal Restructuring

While this is not a feature that is visible to the user, it's worth mentioning that over the last weeks we did some major refactoring of Mp3tag's code base by changing to use standard container libraries and algorithms.

## Further changes

Furthermore, this version fixes some issues which were reported during the last months as denoted in the history of changes.

# Mp3tag v2.59

## Support for Direct Stream Digital (DSF)

With this version Mp3tag supports Direct Stream Digital (DSF) files with ID3v2 tags.

## Further changes

Furthermore, this version fixes some issues which were reported during the last months, improves some internal parts and makes use of the taskbar progress feature which was introduced with Windows 7.

# Mp3tag v2.58

## Improved performance when reading MP4 files

Mp3tag now reads MP4 files faster than before which should be significant on large collections (many files) or collections including MP4 video (large files).

## Improved compatibility of YEAR in ID3v2.3

With Mp3tag v2.53 released almost one year ago we decided to combine the release year (ID3v2.3 frame TYER, displayed as YEAR) and release date (ID3v2.3 frame TDAT, displayed as DATE) in YEAR and display it as YYYY-MM-DD. The intention was to improve compatibility with other applications and the ID3v2 standard.
Since then we've received numerous support requests both on the Mp3tag Forums and via email from users who are unsatisfied with that change. Either because they use a different formatting of date values, use some value denoting a specific time frame (e.g., the 80s) or simply wanted to preserve values that were not fitting in the new date formatting scheme.
With Mp3tag v2.58 we revert this change to the previous behaviour.

# Mp3tag v2.55

## Support for IETF Opus

Mp3tag now supports the IETF Opus codec. More information can be found on the official website and on Wikipedia.

# Mp3tag v2.54

## Support for Windows 8

Mp3tag now officially supports Windows 8 operating system. If you find any quirk or think you've found a bug please let us know at support@mp3tag.de.

# Mp3tag v2.53

## Improved support for Drag & Drop of cover art

Mp3tag now uses a different method for drag & drop of cover art which does not require reencoding the cover image again but instead uses the original image whenever possible. In addition, support for drag & drop of cover art from Google Chrome has been added.

## Improved compatibility of YEAR in ID3v2.3

The release year (ID3v2.3 frame TYER, displayed as YEAR) and release date (ID3v2.3 frame TDAT, displayed as DATE) are now combined in YEAR and displayed as YYYY-MM-DD. This improves compatibility with other applications (e.g., foobar2000) and provides a consistent view with all revisions of the ID3v2 specification.

# Mp3tag v2.52

## Option to specify cover art directory

With this option located at 'Options > Directories' you can specify a default directory that is displayed when adding cover art. Besides fully-qualified path names, you can provide relative path names and use placeholders. If no default directory is specified or the directory cannot be opened, Mp3tag opens the directory of the first selected file iff it contains cover art or the current working directory in all other cases.

# Mp3tag v2.50

## Converter Tag — Tag

This converter formats tag fields by other fields content, which means that you can use it to copy tags from one field to another or to combine contents of multiple different tag fields in one tag field. As already known from the other converters, you can use placeholders for any tag field and scripting functions within the format string to format the content of the specified tag field.
Furthermore, the format string is evaluated while typing and you can verify the results using the builtin preview.

## Unicode Playlists in UTF-8 format

You can now save playlists in Unicode format encoded as UTF-8 if you use *.m3u8 as file extension. This can be useful if file names contain special characters. Applications which support UTF-8 encoded playlists are, e.g., Apple iTunes and foobar2000.

## Discogs API 2.0

Discogs.com released a completely redesigned API for accessing data from their website based on the popular JSON format. Mp3tag's web source framework and the corresponding discogs web source have been updated to this new format.

# Mp3tag v2.49

## Support for unknown MP4 tags

Previous to this version, MP4 tags that were unknown to Mp3tag were deleted from the files, which was an issue for some users. With this version, Mp3tag keeps those unknown MP4 tags (also called atoms).

## Support for wildcards at cover import from file

The actions Import cover from file and Import text file now support wildcards * (matches zero to many characters) and ? (matches exactly one character). This should ease cover import from randomly named files significantly.

## Updated Web Sources

The MusicBrainz and discogs Web Sources are now both based on the corresponding web service API which makes them more robust to changes on the respective web sites.

# Mp3tag v2.48

This version is mainly a maintenance release which updates the Amazon Web Sources and improves Amazon query handling to decrease the amount of needed requests per query. As soon as enough users updated to this new release, the request limit enforced by Amazon should not be an issue anymore.

# Mp3tag v2.47

## Tag fields renamed

With this release some of the tag fields that are used for format strings, actions, columns, exports, and filters are renamed to have more accessible and intuitive names. This also means that all parts of Mp3tag where you have used the old names have to be updated. We know that this is an invasive change but think that it was a step necessary to keep it everything maintainable and understandable for new users of the program.
Please see the list below for details on the renamed tag fields:

- BAND to ALBUMARTIST
- ALBUMSORTORDER to ALBUMSORT
- ARTISTSORTORDER to ARTISTSORT
- BANDSORTORDER to ALBUMARTISTSORT
- COMPOSERSORTORDER to COMPOSERSORT
- TITLESORTORDER to TITLESORT
- TVSHOWSORTORDER to TVSHOWSORT
- ITUNESCOMPILATION to COMPILATION
- ITUNESPODCAST to PODCAST
- ITUNESPODCASTCATEGORY to PODCASTCATEGORY
- ITUNESPODCASTDESC to PODCASTDESC
- ITUNESPODCASTID to PODCASTID
- ITUNESPODCASTURL to PODCASTURL

Some of them might be familiar to you, others might be new. If you are wondering which other fields are available, please see Names of tag fields for a complete list.

## Actions menu

The actions feature which was well hidden under the converter menu now has a dedicated top-level menu where all action groups are accessible via menu items. If you are not familiar with the actions in Mp3tag please have a look at the Actions help page. It is a powerful feature and worth looking at.

## Amazon

Amazon has limited access to their web service to 2000 requests per hour. That means that you might get an occassional error 503 when using the Amazon tag source. However, the limit is reset each hour so you can try again later if it is not working for you.

# Mp3tag v2.46

## Explorer Shell Extension

The right-click menu extension is now realised by a dedicated Shell extension which improves opening files and directories via the context menu also for large amounts of files.

## Improved user-defined field mappings

The user-defined mappings for field names introduced in Mp3tag v2.45 now have an own help page and were further improved with regard to mapping multiple field names to one user-defined field name.

## Improved Tag Sources dialog

The Tag Sources dialog now also supports reordering of files via drag and drop allowing to quickly rearrange files according to the titles. Yes, we made it work with multiple files too :-) The sorting and selection state of the Tag Sources search results are now also remembered if you decide to go back and pick another result.

## Portable settings

Previous versions of Mp3tag stored toolbar and panel positions in the Windows Registry. This changed with this release so that Mp3tag now stores all configuration data in its own configuration files.

# Mp3tag v2.45

## Improved Filter

The filter now supports filter expressions where it is now possible to combine filter criteria and use format strings for filtering. The filter now also comes with a history, providing easy access to your often-used filter expressions.

## User-defined field mappings

Mp3tag now supports user-defined mappings for field names. This is particularly useful in case you need to make field names consistent across different types of tags. The feature is available via 'Options > Tags > Mapping' where you can create mappings for a specific tag type (APEv2, ID3v2, MP4, VorbisComment or WMA), provide a Source name (Mp3tag's internal name) and a target name (your preferred field name).

## Multiline fields for Tag Panel

Are you adding lyrics, artist biographies or other text-intensive information to your songs? If so, you can now add multiline custom fields to the Tag Panel via Options > Tag Panel.

# Mp3tag v2.43

## Automatic Updates

This version comes with support for automatic checking for updates on program startup. You can decide whether you want to get notified on stable final releases only, or whether you want the freshest stuff from our compilers (Beta versions). If you don't want Mp3tag to check for updates you can disable it completely at 'Options > Updates'.

## Horizontal Tag Panel

While it was always possible to drag the Tag Panel and dock it above or below Mp3tag's file list, the input fields are now arranged more effectively. It's also possible to disable the directory switcher from the Tag Panel.

## New Translations

Mp3tag is now also translated to Danish, Hebrew, Vietnamese, and Ukranian language.

# Mp3tag v2.34 - Support for cover art / Import from Amazon.com

## Support for cover art

With the new release Mp3tag supports embedded cover art for files with ID3v2 tags, TTA- and WMA files. You can add cover art via the extended tag dialog at View > Extended Tags... or Alt + T.

## Import from Amazon.com

Besides the freedb support, Mp3tag now has the ability to get album information from Amazon.com. Just choose the small arrow from the right of the Icon and select Amazon.com. You'll get a list of matching items and can choose the album to import the tags (and cover art).
The Amazon.com import uses Mp3tag's incredible web source framework. There are even more web sources available at the Web Source Archive on the Mp3tag forums.

Please visit the Mp3tag forums if you have other questions regarding the new release.

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# Mp3tag v2.33 - Support for Unicode

Probably the most import change and new feature in this version is the support for Unicode through the whole program. Mp3tag writes ID3v2 tags in Unicode format (UTF-16) by default now, but there are still some programs, portables or car radios which have problems with ID3v2 tags stored in Unicode format (though this is specified within the ID3v2 standard). To use Mp3tag with this programs or devices, simply enable the option Always write ISO-8859-1 tags instead of UTF-16 at Options > Tags > Mpeg. After that, just save the tags again by clicking or by using the Ctrl + S hotkey.
If you have problems displaying tags with characters from other charsets (like Cyrillic) in Mp3tag, the tags are probably stored in a system codepage instead of Unicode or ISO-8859-1. To convert these tags from a specific codepage to Unicode, simply create a new action Convert codepage, select the appropriate tag field(s) and choose the codepage from the drop-down list.

Please visit the Mp3tag forums if you have other questions regarding the new release.

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# Mp3tag v2.27 - New syntax for scripting functions

The last versions had major problems with the backslash and the double quotes characters within scripting functions so we had to reimplement the part which is responsible for evaluating the built in functions.
The names of the functions did not change - you don't have to learn new function names or placeholder names.

## What has changed?

- There is no need to put parameters of function in double quotes anymore.
- There is no need to leave the $ character from nested function calls.
- There are (hopefully) no problems with backslahes and double quotes anymore.
- The scripting functions $meta and $join are obsolete now.

## Are there any special characters with specific functionality/limitations?

- `[ ... ]` Displays contents of brackets only if at least one of fields referenced inside has been found.
- `'` Outputs raw text without parsing. This will output the contained string and ignore all reserved characters (%,$,[,]) in it.
- `$%[]`You have to put the single quote around these reserved characters if you want to use them unparsed.
- `'`You have to put the single quote before this reserved character if you want to output a singe quote.

## Examples for conversion

- `$num("%track%", 2)` is now
  `$num(%track%,2)`
- `file://$replace("%_folderpath%","\","/")` is now
  `file://$replace(%_folderpath%,\,/)`
- `%_tag_read% [%_tag%]` is now
  `%_tag_read% '['%_tag%']'`

Please visit the Mp3tag forums if you have other questions regarding the new release.

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