Longitudinal position information on a magnetic tape media

A magnetic tape media for storing data comprises at least one servo band extending along the tape and comprising lateral servo information. Additional information is integrated into the servo information and is encoded by an M-ary alphabet A comprising M>2 different symbols and is arranged in a set of words. Each word contains synchronization information, longitudinal position information (LPOS) and other information, such as manufacturing information. Each symbol used for representing the synchronization information is from a set B of m symbols, where set B is a proper subset of the symbols in the alphabet A such that 1 ¤ m < M. Each symbol used for representing the longitudinal position information and the other information is from a set C of M-m symbols, where set C is a complementary set to set B. The longitudinal position information may be compressed and include error correction encoding. A single symbol may be encoded per servo frame using position modulation.