General Options

-1, -2

Show/modify ID3v1/ID3v2 tags only. By default it does both v1 and v2 tags.

-q

Quiet (no output). This is the default if any changes are being made.

-t

Terse output.

-v

Verbose output. This is the default if no options are supplied.

-x, -X

View extended ID3v2 frames. -X shows all ID3v2 frames as extended frames, including the basic ones (artist, album, etc).

If terse output (-t) is selected, an attempt to summarise the extended frames as tersely as possible is made.

Extended frames are separated by :. Simple extended frames are of the form "framename=value".

Complex frames have a leading frame name, then a :. The elements of the frame are enclosed in angle brackets (<>), separated by :, and are displayed in the form "elementname=value". The contents of binary frames (eg _Data) is displayed as "<data>"

For instance, one simple and one complex frame would be displayed as eg:

 filename:ext:TSIZ=2000:APIC:<Picture Type=Other:_Data=<data>:MIME type=image/gif:
 filename:ext:Description=file.gif>
    

-f

Summarise available ID3v2 frame types.

-F

Show a detailed listing of available ID3v2 frame types.. This is several pages long, so you may wish to pipe it to a pager such as more(1).

-h

Shows a summary of command line options.

--

Treat remaining command line arguments as files to operate on, not options.

Options to set basic metadata (artist, album, etc)

-A artist

Set Artist

-L album

Set aLbum

-T track

Set Trackname (song title)

-N num

Set trackNumber

-G genre

Set Genre

-Y year

Set Year

-C comment

Set Comment

Options to add/replace extended frames

To find out about available frame formats, see MP3::Tag::ID3v2-Data(1).

For a quick reference, use mp3id -f.

-ap picfile

Add picture.

-rp picfile

Replace picture. This will only replace the first APIC frame. If there is more than one APIC frame in the file, you will need to use the -rf option, below.

-af 'frame=data'

Add a simple frame. The data field can be empty.

If necessary, you should enclose the frame spec in single quotes ('), especially if there are spaces or other characters that will be interpreted by the shell.

-af 'frame:key1=value:key2=:key3=file(file.dat)'

Add a complex frame. The format is the framename, then a colon, then a list of fieldname=value, separated by colons. Field values can be left blank.

If you want the contents of a file included in the field (useful for binary _Data fields), surround the filename with file(), e.g. "_Data=file(picture.gif)".

If necessary, you should enclose the frame spec in single quotes ('), especially if there are spaces or other characters that will be interpreted by the shell.

If all this is too much hassle, try -pf to enter frame details interactively, with prompting.

-rf 'frame=data'

Replace a simple frame. The data field can be empty.

-rf 'frame:key1=value:key2=:key3=file(file.dat)'

Replace or merge a complex frame.

The frame format is the same for adding frames (-af, above).

If you omit any fields and the frame already exists, they will be taken from the existing version of the frame, otherwise it is an error.

Importing and Exporting data

When writing files containing pictures or binary frame data, the filename is created from the basename of the file (ie with the extension (eg .mp3) lopped off), then a 2 digit number to distinguish multiple frames from the same file, then a guessed extension. If the frame contains a MIME type field, the extension will be guessed from the MIME type, if not it will default to .bin.

For instance, the contents of the _Data field of the first APIC frame with MIME type "image/jpeg" in foo.mp3 will be written to foo.01.jpg.

-i file.id3, -I file.id3

Import data dumped with the -ea option (see below) from from file.id3.

-I deletes the files you have imported, including any files included using the file() syntax.

The format for the .id3 export file is essentially the same as that displayed by mp3id -vx, except that instead of using <data> as a placeholder for binary frame data (_Data etc), it uses the file() notation to include data from a file. See the -af option above for more details on the file() notation.

Not all fields need to be present in the import file, it will only alter those mentioned in it.

-ea

Dump (export) all id3 tag data to a file. The file will be have the same basename as the input file, but with an extension of ".id3". For example, "mp3id -ea foo.mp3" creates the file foo.id3.

This file can be edited then imported using the -i option (see above).

-eb

Extract all binary data stored in frames.

Some frames (eg APIC, the frame for storing pictures) have elements that begin with _, usually "_Data". These elements are used for storing binary data (eg picture data). This extracts the content of the binary data element for each frame that contains one.

-ep

Extract all pictures from file.

-ef frame

Extract named ID3v2 frame.

Deleting data

-df frames

Delete named frame

-da

Delete id3 tags.

-dx

Delete extended frames.

-db

Delete binary frames (frames containing elements starting with _, eg _Data, which contain binary data).

-dp

Delete pictures. This will delete all APIC ID3v2 frames. If you only want to delete the first picture, use:

 mp3id -df APIC file.mp3
    

-dz

Delete id3 tags that contain no data.

-dN

Delete trackNumber.

-dA

Delete Artist.

-dL

Delete aLbum

-dT

Delete Track name (song title).

-dG

Delete Genre.

-dY

Delete Year.

-dC

Delete Comment.

Prompting

-pa

Prompt for all items.

-pN

Prompt for track Number.

-pA

Prompt for Artist.

-pL

Prompt for aLbum.

-pT

Prompt for Track name (song title).

-pG

Prompt for Genre.

-pY

Prompt for Year.

-pC

Prompt for Comment.

-pp

Prompt for a picture to add.

-pf

Prompt for an arbitrary frame to add (simple or complex).

Copying and Comparing frames

-c1

Copy data from ID3v1 tag to ID3v2 tag.

-c2

Copy data from ID3v2 tag to ID3v1 tag.

-cb

Copy data from best source. If an ID3v2 frame is set and non-empty, sets the ID3v1 tag data to the same value, otherwise attempts to do the reverse.

-cc, -cC

Compares ID3v1 and ID3v2 data.

If -cc is used, it allows for truncation caused by limited-length ID3v1 tags, and only compares up to the length of the ID3v1 tag data.

-cC is stricter, and complains if there is any difference between the tags.