tagmp3(1)

💖 tagmp3(1) — the user manual, but make it slay 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about tagmp3, and it's genuinely iconic. this is the User manual page for it, and by the end you're gonna be tagging mp3s like it's your whole personality. periodt.

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✨ NAME ✨

tagmp3 — manipulate ID3v1 tags 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tagmp3 [ -n ] mode [ format ] [ file ] ...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

tagmp3 is your little helper that lets you set and remove ID3v1 tags from mp3 files. and then — plot twist — there's also the move mode, which relocates your mp3 files around based on their ID3v1 tag. main character behavior fr fr.

so what even is an ID3v1 tag? it's a lil chunk of extra info bolted onto the file — stuff like artist name, album, and genre. most mp3 players will happily display these for you. no cap. 💅

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👑 MODE 👑

• show — show a file's ID3v1 tag. just vibes, just reading. 👀
• set — sets a file's ID3v1 tag according to format.
• move — move a file to a destination based on FORMAT.
• del — remove a file's ID3v1 tag, if it even has one. bye bestie 💀
• list — displays numeric music genres alongside their meaning.
• -h — print a (not so) short help message.
• -v — print version and exit.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -n — show what will be done, don't alter any file. it's giving window shopping, it's giving look but don't touch 🫶

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⭐ FORMAT STRING ⭐

the format string is a character string composed of zero or more directives: ordinary characters (anything that's not %), which are not interpreted at all, and conversion specifications — and each of those results in the corresponding ID3v1 tag field substitution. every conversion specification gets introduced by the % character. the special sequence %% gets substituted with a single %.

here's every conversion specification and the ID3v1 field it's paired with:

• %A — Artist Name
• %a — Album Name
• %t — Song Title
• %T — Track Number
• %y — Year
• %g — Genre
• %c — Comments

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🎀 format string for set mode 🎀

for set mode, the format string is a list of ID3v1 fields, and each one is followed by either a ':' (the next chars are the field value) or a '?' (ask the user for the field value).

example: tagmp3 set "%A:Pink Floyd %a:The Wall %t? %T?" *.mp3

so for each mp3 in this directory, it sets the artist name to Pink Floyd and the album to The Wall. for each file it asks you for the title and the track number. other fields stay untouched, untouched queen. 🧚

heads up bestie: the genre field requires a numeric value. you can see all the known genres with the list mode.

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🌈 format string for move mode 🌈

the format string is the destination path, where each field identifier gets substituted with the tag value.

example: tagmp3 move "/home/foo/mp3/%A/%a/%T-%t.mp3" *.mp3

with the set example above, this will move all mp3 to "/home/foo/mp3/Pink Floyd/The Wall/{track}-{title}.mp3".

and if you prefer the "flat" naming scheme, you'd use something like:

tagmp3 move "%A-%t.mp3" *.mp3

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🙈 NOTES 🙈

• move mode never overwrite files. not ever. not even a little.
• move mode creates intermediate directories specified in the format string. each directory creation has to be confirmed by the user.
• ID3v2 tags are not supported so far. someday maybe. not today.
• if a file can't be moved (wrong file type, ID3v1 tag absent or blank field, ...) then it is left untouched. we respect it and we leave it be.
• fake mp3 (i.e. a Wave file with a .mp3 extension) get moved into the "fake-mp3/" directory in move mode. as they should. 💀 set mode refuses to tag them, since doing so would add a noisy artifact at the end of the song.

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💀 BUGS 💀

plenty of :) iconic honestly

for move mode, source and destination must reside on the same file system / partition. that's just how it is bestie.

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

Laurent Alacoque <laureck@users.sourceforge.net> CopyLeft 2001

bugs, patch, infos, new releases, girls, money go to: http://mpgtx.sourceforge.net/

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okay that's the whole thing!! shoutout to the Linux manual, APRIL 2001 edition — yeah she's vintage, she's a classic, she ate and left no crumbs 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶