id3edit
News and Info
Mon, Feb 25, 2002 - id3edit 2.0 released! Version 2.0 has fixed some bugs and added a track number field. Download it here
Mon, Feb 25, 2002 - Upated this page, and added the news section to the project page on sourceforge.

Project Info
General: Devolopers: Related:

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Introduction
ID3edit is a command line based ID3v1.1 tag editor for unix like systems. If you don't know what an ID3 tag is, let me fill you in. An ID3 tag is a descriptive tag placed in the last 128 bytes of an mp3 file. The information that is placed in this tag are as follows:
  • Song Name (30 Characters Max)
  • Artist Name (30 Characters Max)
  • Album Name (30 Characters Max)
  • Year (4 Characters Max)
  • Comment (28 Characters Max)
  • Track (Number Between 0-255)
  • Genre (Number Between 0-255)

Installation
To install id3edit, simply gunzip the archive file like so...
$gunzip id3edit.tar.gz

Next, unpack the tar file like so...
$tar -xvf id3edit.tar

Now, you should have a new directory called id3edit. Next you change to the id3edit directory and type...
$make

This will compile program. To install id3edit into /usr/local/bin, as root type...
$make install

Lets recap that:
  • Unzip the id3edit.tar.gz file
  • Unpack the tar archive
  • Type make in the new directory
  • Type make install as root if you wish to install to /usr/local/bin
And wollah! You have id3edit!

Usage
usage: id3edit [-s "song name"] [-a "artist name"] [-b "album name"] [-y year] [-c "your comment"] [-t track] [-g genre] [-l] [-v] [-i] [-f] [-d] [-p] [-h] file(s)

Where:
  • -s <"song name"> Sets the song name for file(s)
  • -a <"artist name"> Sets artist name for file(s)
  • -b <"album name"> Sets album name for file(s)
  • -y Sets the four digit year field in the tag for file(s)
  • -c <"your comment"> Inserts a comment into the tag for file(s)
  • -t Sets the track field in the tag for file(s)
  • -g Sets the genre field in the tag for file(s)
  • -l Lists tag information for file(s)
  • -v Lists the current version of id3edit
  • -i Lists information about id3edit
  • -f Forces id3edit to ignore sanity checking of mp3 file(s)
  • -d Deletes the tag information for file(s)
  • -p Prints the list of current known genres
  • -h Prints help for id3edit

The genre field is a number between 0-255 representing the different genres of music. For you programmers, if new genre's are added, and you wish to update id3edit, you may edit the genres.h file.