id3.js is a JavaScript library for reading and parsing ID3 tags of MP3 files.

It can parse both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags within a browser or within Node.

Files can be read from the local disk (Node only), same-origin URLs and File instances (HTML5 File API).

Install:

$ npm i -S id3js

You may parse ID3 tags of a remote MP3 by URL:

<script type="module">
import * as id3 from '//unpkg.com/id3js@^2/lib/id3.js';

id3.fromUrl('/audio/track.mp3').then((tags) => {
  // tags now contains v1, v2 and merged tags
});
</script>

This works by sending a HEAD request for the file and, based on the response, sending subsequent Range requests for the ID3 tags.

This is rather efficient as there is no need for the entire file to be downloaded.

You may parse ID3 tags of a local file in Node:

import * as id3 from 'id3js';

id3.fromPath('./test.mp3').then((tags) => {
  // tags now contains v1, v2 and merged tags
});

Keep in mind, Node must be run with --experimental-modules for this to be imported and it cannot be used with require.

You may parse ID3 tags of a file input:

<input type="file">

<script type="module">
import * as id3 from '//unpkg.com/id3js@^2/lib/id3.js';

document
  .querySelector('input[type="file"]')
  .addEventListener('change', async (e) => {
    const tags = await id3.fromFile(e.currentTarget.files[0]);
    // tags now contains v1, v2 and merged tags
  });
</script>

This will read the data from the File instance using slices, so the entire file is not loaded into memory but rather only the tags.

An MP3 may have images embedded in the ID3 tags. If this is the case, they can be accessed through the tag.images property and will look like so:

{
  "type": "cover-front",
  "mime": "image/jpeg",
  "description": null,
  "data": ArrayBuffer
}

As you can see, the data is provided as an ArrayBuffer. To access it, you may use a DataView or typed array such as Uint8Array.

MIT