This is information such as your show episode’s title, artist, year, genre, and artwork. It is stored within an MP3 file. This information is only relevant for podcasters who manually embed ID3 information in an MP3 before uploading it to Simplecast.

The second version of ID3 tags have been updated to include some of the necessary features that podcasting requires, such as putting these tags at the beginning of the MP3 file. This means that your listeners’ podcast apps will download the episode details of your podcast first so that it can load and be displayed as the first minutes of your episode are fetched for playback. ID3v2 additionally includes the ability to add images (your artwork) within the tags themselves. If you have already been successful at storing an image in your MP3 then you are already using ID3v2 tags.

If you are using ID3 tags, version 2 is IAB compliant. Version 1 is not compliant and you should upgrade in order to meet podcasting standards. To read v1 tags, players have to download more than the user listened to, which would inflate listen duration and count in your analytics by making it seem that the whole episode was listened to. 

IAB standards require that at least 1 minute of an episode be downloaded to count as a listen. To meet this guideline, your ID3 artwork must be less than 300kB.

Still have questions? We'd be happy to answer them. You can reach our Support Team at support@simplecast.com!