How to set metadata for music files?

Question

In windows music files have metadata like artist name, album name associated with them. How is this metadata stored. Is it stored in file system like other file attributes or is it part of MP3 data that Windows Explorer extracts using a MP3 reader plugin?

Is it possible to read/change this information in Linux? Is it possible with commandline?

(I know these attributes can be set using Rhythymbox or some music player but I'm curious if these could also be set directly. Like in Windows the windows itself shows you artist information if you right click the file and open properties dialog)

Answer 1

The tags are stored in a data container located within the MP3 audio file. Some software I use:

1. easytag (GUI)
2. id3v2 (CLI)
3. Picard (GUI)
4. id3tool (CLI)

Also, many music players have tag editing features. The official site for ID3 has the file format specification and a history. As far as right-clicking a file to set a tag, it's almost certainly not a standard feature for any file manager in Linux because of the patent issue. So, you would be trying to find an add-on package for your file manager to gain that functionality.

Answer 2

There is a way to add metadata to media files. You can use ffmpeg.

Reference documentation here.

Adding metadata:

ffmpeg -i inputfile -codec copy -metadata KEY=VALUE outputfile

In order to delete you can set the key to an empty value:

ffmpeg -i inputfile -codec copy -metadata KEY= outputfile

Example:

 ffmpeg -i track05.wav \
   -codec copy \
   -metadata title="This is the title" \
   -metadata author="Made by Me" \
   -metadata copyright="Copyright 2009 Me" \
   -metadata comment="An exercise in Realmedia metadata" \
   -y track05.rm

Answer 3

So I came here to learn about the metadata editing for a video. I tried with the VLC media player and it is working fine for me, so you can try VLC as well...

Here are the steps:

• Open the file in VLC player
• Locate media information from the Tools menu in the player
• This will open a window with current metadata information
• Change the data to the desired one
• save the changes
• you have edited the meta info of the file.