<!-- SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2014-2026 tinytag Contributors SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT -->

tinytag

tinytag is a Python library for reading audio file metadata

Install

python3 -m pip install tinytag

Features

• Read tags, images and properties of audio files
• Supported formats:
  • MP3 / MP2 / MP1 (ID3 v1, v1.1, v2.2, v2.3+)
  • M4A (AAC / ALAC)
  • WAVE / WAV
  • OGG (FLAC / Opus / Speex / Vorbis)
  • FLAC
  • WMA
  • AIFF / AIFF-C
• Same API for all formats
• Small, portable library
• High code coverage
• Pure Python, no dependencies
• Supports Python 3.7 or higher

[!IMPORTANT]
Support for changing/writing metadata will not be added. Use another library such as Mutagen for this.

Usage

tinytag only provides the minimum needed for reading metadata, and presents it in a simple format. It can determine track number, total tracks, title, artist, album, year, duration and more.

from tinytag import TinyTag
tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.mp3')

print(f'This track is by {tag.artist}.')
print(f'It is {tag.duration:.2f} seconds long.')

[!WARNING]
The ignore_errors parameter of TinyTag.get() is obsolete as of tinytag 2.0.0, and will be removed in the future.

Alternatively you can use tinytag directly on the command line:

$ python3 -m tinytag /some/music.mp3
{
  "filename": "/some/music.mp3",
  "filesize": 3243226,
  "duration": 173.52,
  "channels": 2,
  "bitrate": 128,
  "samplerate": 44100,
  "artist": [
    "artist name"
  ],
  "album": [
    "album name"
  ],
  "title": [
    "track name"
  ],
  "track": 4,
  "genre": [
    "Jazz"
  ],
  "year": [
    "2010"
  ],
  "comment": [
    "Some comment here"
  ]
}

Check python3 -m tinytag --help for all CLI options, for example other output formats.

Supported Files

To receive a tuple of file extensions tinytag supports, use the SUPPORTED_FILE_EXTENSIONS constant:

TinyTag.SUPPORTED_FILE_EXTENSIONS

Alternatively, check if a file is supported by providing its path:

is_supported = TinyTag.is_supported('/some/music.mp3')

Common Metadata

tinytag provides some common attributes, which always contain a single value. These are helpful when you need quick access to common metadata.

File/Audio Properties

tag.bitdepth      # bit depth as integer (for lossless audio)
tag.bitrate       # bitrate in kBits/s as float
tag.duration      # audio duration in seconds as float
tag.filename      # filename as string
tag.filesize      # file size in bytes as integer
tag.samplerate    # samples per second as integer

[!WARNING]
The tag.audio_offset attribute is obsolete as of tinytag 2.0.0, and will be removed in the future.

Metadata Fields

tag.album         # album as string
tag.albumartist   # album artist as string
tag.artist        # artist name as string
tag.comment       # file comment as string
tag.composer      # composer as string
tag.disc          # disc number as integer
tag.disc_total    # total number of discs as integer
tag.genre         # genre as string
tag.title         # title of the song as string
tag.track         # track number as integer
tag.track_total   # total number of tracks as integer
tag.year          # year or date as string

Additional Metadata

For additional values of the same field type, uncommon metadata fields, or metadata specific to certain file formats, use other:

tag.other         # a dictionary of additional fields

[!WARNING]
The other dictionary has replaced the extra dictionary in tinytag 2.0.0. The latter will be removed in a future release.

The following other field names are standardized in tinytag, and optionally present when files provide such metadata:

barcode
bpm
catalog_number
conductor
copyright
director
encoded_by
encoder_settings
grouping
initial_key
isrc
language
license
lyricist
lyrics
media
movement
movement_name
movement_total
publisher
set_subtitle
show_movement
url
work

Additional other field names not documented above may be present, but are format-specific and may change or disappear in future tinytag releases. If tinytag does not expose metadata you need, or you wish to standardize more field names, open a feature request on GitHub for discussion.

other values are always provided as strings, and are not guaranteed to be valid. Should e.g. the bpm value in the file contain non-numeric characters, tinytag will provide the string as-is. It is your responsibility to handle possible exceptions, e.g. when converting the value to an integer.

Multiple values of the same field type are provided if a file contains them. Values are always provided as a list, even when only a single value exists.

Example:

from tinytag import OtherFields, TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.mp3')
other_fields: OtherFields = tag.other
catalog_numbers: list[str] | None = other_fields.get('catalog_number')

if catalog_numbers:
    catalog_number: str = catalog_numbers[0]
    print(catalog_number)

print(catalog_numbers)

Output:

> 10
> ['10']

When a file contains multiple values for a common metadata field (e.g. artist), the primary value is accessed through the common attribute (tag.artist), and any additional values through the other dictionary (tag.other['artist']).

Example:

from tinytag import TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.mp3')
artist: str | None = tag.artist
additional_artists: list[str] | None = tag.other.get('artist')

print(artist)
print(additional_artists)

Output:

> main artist
> ['another artist', 'yet another artist']

All Metadata

If you need to receive all available metadata as key-value pairs in a flat dictionary, use the as_dict() method. This combines the common attributes and other dictionary, which can be more convenient in some cases.

from tinytag import TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.mp3')
metadata: dict = tag.as_dict()

Images

Additionally, you can also read embedded images by passing a image=True keyword argument to TinyTag.get().

If you need to receive an image of a specific kind, including its description, use images:

tag.images        # available embedded images

The following common image attributes are available, providing the first located image of each kind:

tag.images.front_cover  # front cover as 'Image' object
tag.images.back_cover   # back cover as 'Image' object
tag.images.media        # media (e.g. CD label) as 'Image' object

When present, any additional images are available in an images.other dictionary, using the following standardized key names:

generic
icon
alt_icon
front_cover
back_cover
media
leaflet
lead_artist
artist
conductor
band
composer
lyricist
recording_location
during_recording
during_performance
screen_capture
bright_colored_fish
illustration
band_logo
publisher_logo
unknown

Provided values are always lists containing at least one Image object.

The Image object provides the following attributes:

data           # image data as bytes
name           # image name/kind as string
mime_type      # image MIME type as string
description    # image description as string

To receive any available image, prioritizing the front cover, use images.any:

from tinytag import Image, TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.ogg', image=True)
image: Image | None = tag.images.any

if image is not None:
    data: bytes = image.data
    name: str = image.name
    mime_type: str = image.mime_type
    description: str = image.description

    print(len(data))
    print(name)
    print(mime_type)
    print(description)

Output:

> 74452
> front_cover
> image/jpeg
> some image description

[!WARNING]
tag.images.any has replaced tag.get_image() in tinytag 2.0.0. tag.get_image() will be removed in the future.

To receive a common image, e.g. front_cover:

from tinytag import Image, Images, TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.ogg', image=True)
images: Images = tag.images
cover_image: Image = images.front_cover

if cover_image is not None:
    data: bytes = cover_image.data
    description: str = cover_image.description

To receive an additional image, e.g. bright_colored_fish:

from tinytag import Image, OtherImages, TinyTag

tag: TinyTag = TinyTag.get('/some/music.ogg', image=True)
other_images: OtherImages = tag.images.other
fish_images: list[Image] | None = other_images.get('bright_colored_fish')

if fish_images:
    image = fish_images[0]  # Use first image
    data = image.data
    description = image.description

Encoding

To open files using a specific encoding, you can use the encoding parameter. This parameter is however only used for formats where the encoding is not explicitly specified.

TinyTag.get('a_file_with_gbk_encoding.mp3', encoding='gbk')

File-like Objects

To use a file-like object (e.g. BytesIO) instead of a file path, pass a file_obj keyword argument:

TinyTag.get(file_obj=your_file_obj)

Exceptions