music-metadata

What is music-metadata?

The music-metadata npm package is a powerful tool for parsing and extracting metadata from audio files. It supports a wide range of audio formats and provides detailed information about the audio file, including tags, format, and technical properties.

What are music-metadata's main functionalities?

Extract Basic Metadata

This feature allows you to extract basic metadata from an audio file, such as title, artist, album, and genre. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `parseFile` method to read and log metadata from an MP3 file.

const mm = require('music-metadata');
const fs = require('fs');

async function getMetadata(filePath) {
  try {
    const metadata = await mm.parseFile(filePath);
    console.log(metadata);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error.message);
  }
}

getMetadata('path/to/audio/file.mp3');

Extract Format Information

This feature allows you to extract format information from an audio file, such as the container type, codec, sample rate, and bit rate. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `parseFile` method to read and log format information from an MP3 file.

const mm = require('music-metadata');
const fs = require('fs');

async function getFormatInfo(filePath) {
  try {
    const metadata = await mm.parseFile(filePath);
    console.log(metadata.format);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error.message);
  }
}

getFormatInfo('path/to/audio/file.mp3');

Extract Technical Properties

This feature allows you to extract technical properties from an audio file, such as duration, number of channels, and bit depth. The code sample demonstrates how to use the `parseFile` method to read and log technical properties from an MP3 file.

const mm = require('music-metadata');
const fs = require('fs');

async function getTechnicalProperties(filePath) {
  try {
    const metadata = await mm.parseFile(filePath);
    console.log(metadata.common);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error.message);
  }
}

getTechnicalProperties('path/to/audio/file.mp3');

Other packages similar to music-metadata

node-id3

The node-id3 package is focused on reading and writing ID3 tags in MP3 files. It provides a simpler interface for handling ID3 tags compared to music-metadata, but it is limited to MP3 files and does not support other audio formats.

musicmetadata

The musicmetadata package is another tool for extracting metadata from audio files. It supports a variety of audio formats and provides similar functionality to music-metadata. However, it is less actively maintained and may not support the latest audio formats and tags.

id3js

The id3js package is a JavaScript library for reading ID3 tags from MP3 files. It is designed to work in both Node.js and browser environments. While it offers similar functionality to music-metadata for MP3 files, it does not support other audio formats.

README

Stream and file based music metadata parser for node.

Installation

Install via npm:

npm install music-metadata

Features

• Supports metadata of the following audio and tag types:

File extension	MIME-type	Tag header type
ape	audio/ape	APEv2
aif, aiff, aifc	audio/aiff, audio/x-aif, audio/x-aifc	ID3v2
asf, wma, wmv	audio/x-ms-wma, video/x-ms-asf	ASF
flac	audio/flac	Vorbis
m4a, m4b, m4p, m4v, m4r, 3gp, mp4, aac	audio/aac, audio/aacp	QTFF
mp2, mp3, m2a	audio/mpeg	ID3v1.1, ID3v2
ogv, oga, ogx, ogg	audio/ogg, application/ogg	Vorbis
wav	audio/wav, audio/wave	ID3v2

• Support for MusicBrainz / Picard tags
• Support for encoding / format details:
  • bitrate
  • sample depth
  • duration
  • encoding profile (e.g. CBR, V0, V2)

API

Options:

• duration: default: false, if set to true, it will parse the whole media file if required to determine the duration.
• native: default: false, if set to true, it will return native tags in addition to the common tags.
• skipCovers: default: false, if set to true, it will not return embedded cover-art (images).

Examples

JavaScript

var mm = require('music-metadata');
const util = require('util')

mm.parseFile('../test/samples/MusicBrainz-multiartist [id3v2.4].V2.mp3', {native: true})
  .then(function (metadata) {
    console.log(util.inspect(metadata, { showHidden: false, depth: null }));
  })
  .catch(function (err) {
    console.error(err.message);
  });

TypeScript

import * as mm from 'music-metadata';
import * as util from 'util';

mm.parseFile('../test/samples/MusicBrainz-multiartist [id3v2.4].V2.mp3')
  .then((metadata) => {
    console.log(util.inspect(metadata, {showHidden: false, depth: null}));
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    console.error(err.message);
  });

Although in most cases duration is included, in some cases it requires music-metadata parsing the entire file. To enforce parsing the entire file if needed you should set duration to true.

mm.parseFile('sample.mp3', {duration: true})
  .then(function (metadata) {
    console.log(util.inspect(metadata, { showHidden: false, depth: null }));
  })

For a live example see Parse MP3 (ID3v2.4 tags) stream with music-metadata, hosted on RunKit.

In order to read the duration of a stream (with the exception of file streams), in some cases you should pass the size of the file in bytes.

mm.parseStream(someReadStream, 'audio/mpeg', { duration: true, fileSize: 26838 })
  .then( function (metadata) {
     console.log(util.inspect(metadata, { showHidden: false, depth: null }));
     someReadStream.close();
   });

Licence

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2017 Borewit

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.