MP3 ID3 Tag Reader
Read title, artist, album, year and genre from an MP3's ID3v2 tag.
Overview
The MP3 ID3 tag reader extracts the embedded title, artist, album, year, track number, and genre from an MP3 file's ID3v2 metadata frames. It is the fastest way to confirm that the tags in a file match what your music library will display.
Music collectors cleaning up ripped libraries, podcasters verifying episode metadata, and engineers building media servers reach for this when only the metadata matters, not the audio. Long-tail searches that lead here include "read MP3 tags online", "view ID3v2 metadata", and "extract title and artist from MP3 file".
How it works
ID3v2 is the dominant tagging standard for MP3 files, defined by the ID3v2.3 and v2.4 specifications. The tag sits at the start of the file and begins with the identifier ID3 followed by a version byte, flags, and a syncsafe-encoded size. The body contains frames, each identified by a four-character code: TIT2 for title, TPE1 for artist, TALB for album, TYER/TDRC for year, TRCK for track, TCON for genre.
The reader walks each frame in sequence, respects the text encoding byte (0 for ISO-8859-1, 1 for UTF-16 with BOM, 2 for UTF-16BE, 3 for UTF-8), and decodes the value. Legacy ID3v1 tags (the final 128 bytes of the file, beginning with TAG) are read as a fallback when no ID3v2 tag is present.
Examples
- Confirm a downloaded podcast episode has the correct episode title in its tag.
- Check whether a batch of ripped tracks all carry the same album value before importing.
- Spot UTF-16 encoding in a tag that some older players cannot handle.
- Read the year on a re-mastered album that may have been mis-tagged.
FAQ
Does it write or fix tags?
No, this is a read-only viewer. To edit tags, use a desktop tag editor that can rewrite the frames in place.
What about cover art?
The APIC frame embeds cover art as JPEG or PNG. The reader reports its presence and dimensions but does not display the image inline.
Why does my track show no metadata?
The MP3 may have no ID3 tag at all, or only an ID3v1 footer. Some streaming-export workflows strip ID3v2 to save bytes; this is normal.
Does it work on M4A or FLAC?
No — ID3 is specific to MP3 (and a few related formats). M4A uses MP4 atom-based tags; FLAC uses Vorbis comments. Use a format-appropriate inspector for those.
Can it detect ID3v2.4 unsynchronisation?
Yes. When the unsync flag is set, the reader reverses the byte-stuffing transformation before decoding frames, ensuring text is read correctly.