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MP3 Tag Editor

Fix an MP3 that shows up as "Unknown artist", with a file name for a title, in the wrong order or without artwork. Pick the file, edit the title, artist, album, year, track, genre and comment, add a cover image and download the tagged MP3. The audio is not touched, and the file is edited in your browser and is not uploaded.

Drop your MP3 here or click to browse

MP3 files up to 200 MB. Only the tags change; the audio is copied as it is.

Need to cut the recording first? Use the Audio Trimmer.

The file is edited in your browser and is not uploaded.

How to edit MP3 tags

Three steps, in your browser. Nothing to install and no sign-in.

  1. 1

    Choose your MP3

    Drop the file on the box or click to browse, up to 200 MB. The editor reads the tags it already has (ID3v2.2, v2.3, v2.4 or the old ID3v1) and fills in the fields.

  2. 2

    Edit the fields and the cover

    Change the title, artist, album, album artist, year, track number, genre and comment. Add a JPEG or PNG cover up to 5 MB, or remove the one that is there.

  3. 3

    Download the tagged MP3

    Press Download tagged MP3. You get the same file name with a new ID3v2.3 tag in front of the original audio, ready to copy back where it came from.

No MP3 yet? Convert the recording first with Voice Memo to MP3 or WAV to MP3.

What each tag does

The fields players and music libraries use most when they list, sort and show a file.

  • Title

    The name a player shows instead of the file name. Without it, many players fall back to "Episode_final_v3.mp3". Keep it short enough to read on a phone screen.

  • Artist and album artist

    Artist is who is on this track: the guest, the speaker or the band. Album artist is who the whole album or series belongs to. Set album artist to the same value on every file of a series so libraries keep them together.

  • Track number

    Sets the order inside an album. Write it as "3" or "3/12" (track 3 of 12), the form the ID3 standard gives. Files without track numbers are usually sorted by title instead.

  • Cover art

    A picture stored inside the MP3 as the front cover. A square JPEG or PNG works best; the editor stores it as picture type 3, "Cover (front)", the one players look for.

What ID3 tags are

An MP3 holds no title or artist in its audio. Those details live in an ID3 tag: a small block of text and pictures stored in the same file, which players and music libraries read to label it.

There are two families. ID3v1 is the old one: 128 bytes at the very end of the file, with room for 30 characters of title, artist and album, no cover and Latin letters only. ID3v2 sits at the start of the file, has no practical length limit, supports any language and can carry pictures. It comes in three versions: v2.2 with three-letter frame names, v2.3, and v2.4, which added UTF-8 text.

This editor reads all of them and writes ID3v2.3. Some older players and devices do not read v2.4 tags, while software that reads v2.4 also reads v2.3, so v2.3 is the safer choice. Text that fits in Latin-1 is stored as Latin-1; anything else (accents beyond Latin-1, Cyrillic, Chinese, emoji) is stored as UTF-16. If the file has an ID3v1 tag at the end, it is updated with the new values by default, or you can remove it.

Other information in the tag, such as lyrics, chapters, extra pictures or custom fields, is kept where possible: frames from a v2.3 tag are copied as they are, and v2.4 frames that v2.3 has no slot for are left out.

Tips for tagging your own recordings

  • Podcast episode

    Put the episode number in the title ("Ep. 12: Pricing calls") and in the track field, the show name in album and album artist, and the year. Your listeners' players then sort the episodes the same way you do.

  • Interview archive

    Use the guest's name as artist, the project or story as album and the date in the comment. Months later, a search in your music library finds the right file without opening each one.

  • Voice memo

    A phone memo exported as MP3 often has no tags at all. A title and a date in the comment are enough to tell "New Recording 14" from the client meeting you need.

  • Keep a copy of the original

    The download keeps the original file name, so save it to a new folder or keep the original until you have checked the tagged file in your player.

More on recordings: podcast transcription, recording devices for journalists and turning a voice memo into text.

Tagging your own recordings? Get the words too.

Tags tell a player what a file is. For your own interviews, meetings and episodes, ParrotNotes records on your phone and gives you the transcript and a summary directly, free for 100 minutes of recording a month.

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Related tools

MP3 Tag Editor FAQ

Sources