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As I understand the state of affairs, there is no accepted standard across all the platforms for the definition and layout of metadata. Here is my goal: I want to categorize my music across all types of media players. I need to have various categories such as: Type of dance i.e. Rumba, Salsa, Swing, etc. (many songs may have two types thus I need at least two fields) Mood Rating On top of this I need to be able to quickly sort by those categories hopefully in a media player but worse case in Windows Explorer. I thought about playlists but that is very time consuming, redundant (sometimes need to put same song in multiple playlists) and does not transcend from player to player. So, I thought the best way of doing this is to embed these categories within the metadata which would enable me to sort in a heartbeat and hopefully retain that data forever! Problem: I believe that various players will write/change and handle that data in different ways. I need to pick fields that won’t get overwritten or deleted by any player, platform or other program. Question: What “unused” fields should I use that won’t be overwritten or deleted by any player, platform or other program? What program (Windows Explorer, Player or 3rd party program) could I use to modify those fields? What is the Windows 7 field layout (definition) for the metadata and will Microsoft keep that “standard” across their present/past and future OSs? I have read that MS is working in particular with “Metadata Working Group” but I still don’t see the metadata layout for Windows 7. Is there any player or way to sort on several different catagories (mood and then type of dance and then rating) simultaniously like you can in Excel. I haven’t tried AudioShell which is a Windows Explorer shell extension because I don’t know if programs and players will read/sort, not alter or destroy any of the fields written by this program. Does anyone have such experience with that program? Your help is appreciated! JJ