id3 tags were meant to be a simple way to store metadata in MP3 files, slowly but steadily, things became a bit more complicated
Originally, ID3 tags were meta data near the end of a file, then ID3V2 came along, and meta tags were moved to the beginning (With an ID3V1 copy at the end added by most ID3 editors)
Album artwork is another complication, As it may be embedded in the file, An older method used to depend on keeping an image called “cover.jpg” in the folder where the file is stored.
You can also have “user-defined fields”, which can be helpful if you are developing a music player that has some novel ideas
ID3 tag information can be obtained from gnudb.org, MusicBrainz, Discogs, Amazon
Gnome
- EasyTAG: GIT = tag editor for MP3, Ogg Vorbis files and more
Written in C,
Dep: libid3-3.8.3v5 libid3tag0 libopusfile0 – Suggested: libid3-tools
KDE
- KID3
LINUX Command Line
- id3:
- id3edit: GIT = id3edit is a command line ID3v2 tag editor and debugger
Windows
- MP3TAG: Freeware (Not free as in freedom), But great software nonetheless 😉