id3lib - The ID3v1/ID3v2 Tagging Library
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[ID3v2 logo]
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Latest Release Version:
3.8.3
Overview
id3lib is an
open-source,
cross-platform software development library for reading, writing,
and manipulating
ID3v1
and
ID3v2 tags. It
is an on-going project whose primary goals are full compliance with
the
ID3v2 standard, portability
across several platforms, and providing a powerful and feature-rich
API with a highly stable and efficient implementation.
Features
- Powerful
-
id3lib automatically handles most of the low-level details
involved with manipulating ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in digital audio
files. It provides support for several tasks associated with
manipulating such tags, such as conversion between tagging
formats, identifying valid tags, converting
sizes, synchronisation, compression, and padding.
- Standards-compliant
-
While many digital audio libraries and applications provide
minimal support
for basic ID3v1
tagging, few provide the same level of support for the up-and-coming
ID3v2 standard like id3lib.
The developers of id3lib work closely with the ID3v2 specification and go to
great effort to ensure the library correctly handles all its
nuances. By using id3lib for both your ID3v1 and ID3v2 tagging needs, you can be
assured that your application produces tags that comply with
the standard now and in the future.
- Cross-platform
-
A primary goal for id3lib is cross-platform compatibility. The
library is developed primarily on the GNU/Linux operating system but has
been compiled and tested on other Unix-like OS's as well as
Windows NT.
- Multi-language
-
id3lib aspires to provide interfaces for multiple programming
languages, and currently fully supports both C and C++. A COM
wrapper (id3com) is also supplied allowing VB, VBA, VBScript and
other COM-enabled languages to use the library.
Development
Licensing
The id3lib library is
open-source software, licensed
under the
GNU
Library General Public License (LGPL). In short, this allows
any application to link to and use the library without affecting
their license, while guaranteeing that the id3lib library itself
(and any modifications to it) will remain freely available in
source code form. The project developers therefore greatly
encourage input from everyone, be it with feature suggestions, code
patches, bug reports, or anything. The best way to contribute to
this effort is to
subscribe
to the mailing list and join in on the discussions!
Versions of ID3Lib prior to and including version 3.05a were
released to the public domain. The last such release is still
available
for download. These versions are therefore completely free of
any licence restrictions, but are no longer maintained.
Documentation
The following documentation is available for those who wish to
develop software with id3lib:
Projects
The following software projects have used, do use, or will use
id3lib for their
ID3v1
and
ID3v2 tag
processing:
-
CHASE (Car and Home Audio System Environment)
is a combination of hardware and software to provide a capability to play audio based computer files
(including mp3's) out an audio card to some form of amplifier for the enjoyment of the listener.
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Grip is a cd-player and
cd-ripper for the Gnome desktop.
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MusicMatch, creators of
the MusicMatch Jukebox for Windows and a previous project
coordinator for ID3Lib.
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Smart Mp3 Renamer,
is a windows only program designed to rename and tag mp3 albums.
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D.O.M.O., is a
music organizer which indexes audio/mp3 CDs, extracts all possible
information and inserts everything into a MySQL database.
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Mp3 Tag Tools
is a Free ID3 Tag Editing tool for Windows.
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EasyTAG is a
GTK+ editor using id3lib to handle ID3v1/v2 tags of MP3 and FLAC files.
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JJ MP3 Renamer is a
full-featured ID3 tagger/file renamer/playlist generator.
-
Idfree is a
simple MP3 ID3 tag editor for Windows.
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Muzikbrowzer is an audio player application designed for the
entertainment pc - a pc connected to your entertainment system! Use your
remote control to browse your music collection on your tv screen! Unique
music experience. Focus on your music, not the application. Runs on
Microsoft Windows 2000 & XP. Supports mp3 & ogg.
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MediaMonkey (formerly Songs-DB) a Free MP3 player, jukebox
and music organizer.
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GNOMAD is
a GTK+ client program for the NOMAD Jukebox. It's using
id3lib for their ID3v1/v2
support.
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The id3v2 tagger is
a GNU/Linux command-line editor for
ID3v1/v2 tags
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Zlurp! is an all-in-one CD
audio tool for Windows that rips, encodes and tags CDs.
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Sonize is
a collection of small but powerful tools integrated in one
application that organizes and prepares your mp3 files for
publishing on CDROM
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AmpBar uses a modified
version of the 3.05a library in their MP3 player and ID3v2 tag
editor.
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UberTunz is
an MP3 Music Player for Apple's new Mac OS X.
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AMIP is
a the "now playing" WinAmp plugin.
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sumi (formerly xtunes) sumi
(formerly xtunes) is a comprehensive digital music system. It supports ripping cds, burning cds,
playing mp3s, organizing digital music in a library with playlists.
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Zinf (formerly FreeAmp) is a great
cross-platform mp3 player. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio
CD playback, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming, RTP streaming, a powerful music browser,
theme support and a download manager.
If we have listed any of the above in error or if we have
neglected any other projects that use id3lib, please
let us
know so that we might update the list accordingly.
Contacting the Authors
The id3lib project is collectively maintained by
the id3lib Sourceforge administrators. See
id3lib's Sourceforge
homepage to contact them directly or join the id3lib mailing list.
The original ID3Lib library was written by
Dirk
Mahoney.
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