How can I read ID3 tags in MP3 files?

**portreathbeach** · 04-15-2008, 04:54 PM

Here is my problem...

I have coded my own front-end and am using the ultraID3lib.dll to pull the id3 tag info from the mp3 files. Everything works fine for v2.3 files (apart from a few that iTunes screwed up), but it doesn't work for v2.2 or v2.4. I was thinking of writing my own code to read the tags, but can only find samples of how to read v1 tags, which is pretty simple. Is there any VB.net code samples available to get the basic stuff, artist, song name etc. as well as the more advanced stuff, like album art from an MP3 file.

Thanks for any help

**Enforcer** · 04-15-2008, 05:28 PM

This is VB6 but it might help

http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/vb...gs/article.asp

**portreathbeach** · 04-16-2008, 10:41 AM

Thanks for the link. Good write-up about MP3 files, haven't had time to play around with the code, but I don't see anywhere about album art in there.

**Enforcer** · 04-16-2008, 11:08 AM

Warning Information overload

http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames

**portreathbeach** · 04-16-2008, 01:25 PM

That is a lot of reading and some pretty involved coding to read into the frames of an mp3 file. Amyway, I have found a few C# samples, and will try and translate these to VB.net.

Thanks for the help

**portreathbeach** · 04-19-2008, 03:56 AM

I am now using .GetDetailsOf to retrieve the Artist, Album, Title etc. but I still can't get the album art from the mp3 file. Is there any VB code that has an example of this. I havn't seen any actual code to do this, there are a few .dll files people have written, but I would like to code it myself if possible.

**Enforcer** · 04-19-2008, 05:47 AM

Have look a roadrunners source, I think there maybe something in there.

**portreathbeach** · 04-19-2008, 04:20 PM

I have had a scan through the RoadRunner source, but can't find any code that extracts the AlbumArt, the only code I can find loads the AlbumArt from files in an albumart folder. For some reason, I can't get RoadRunner to work on my machine, so can't really tell if it can extract the albumart from the mp3.

**slvrsol** · 04-19-2008, 07:56 PM

try looking at the plugin source

Embbeded Mp3 Art Plugin

**bigbrother82** · 05-21-2008, 11:23 PM

While I am not certain, and I am mainly a Java programmer, I believe the album is not embedded in the MP3 file. The MP3 file I believe has a spot for the location of the album art on the drive, but not the actual image.

I'll try to double check that and let you know. I remember reading that somewhere.

Jacob