I have no idea, honestly

Hello all! So, I’m using Winamp for all my listening needs and recently I noticed something. While playing certain tracks – usually listed as MPEG-4 Audio File Format – there’s a strange string of letters and numbers right behind the track’s name. For example, AC IV’s "Staling a Brig" is followed by "(2013-10-14T07:00:00Z)". Is that normal for files in that particular format (Mp3s seem to be free of that)? Or am I missing some codec or whatever? I mean, all my M4As are still working fine, the quality is great, there’s no real technical issue here (I hope), I’m just curious what’s this about.

Oh, I should probably point out (if it’s not obvious by now) that I’m a complete noob when it comes to music and its, let’s say, "technical" side, so if that’s the most stupid question ever asked here, sorry.

That string is the date, obviously. Which version of Winamp are you using? If playing M4A files, you should look in INPUT what has changed with the decoder.

Yes, I know about the date; it’s that other part that’s puzzling me. As for Winamp, from what I see here it’s 5.666 Build 3512.

Check on Preferences-Input-MPEG decoder (maybe? I don’t remember the name of the decoder) to see if the tag display is set correctly.

Okay, found it. Seems to be in order, look: View image: Untitled (http://postimg.org/image/6dkf8ok8h/)

I think it might have been like that since…ever, I mean that date and all. I just realized it now and got a bit freaked out by that. Maybe Winamp isn’t cut for such files? Because with standard MP3s, I can go to file info and check Basic Info, Artwork, ID3v1 and ID3v2, while with M4As all I can do is Basic Info and Artwork.

No, I’m pretty sure something changed. Winamp (specially the latest version) had m4a support. Have you installed a codec or something lately? Worst case scenario, reinstall Winamp.

Well, I was using Audacity for some time and with it a thing called LAME, both of which are gone now. Maybe getting rid of one of those made things change?