How to Edit Audio Metadata and Tags

Flat illustration of a music file panel with an album-art thumbnail, blank tag fields, and a pencil edit icon

Metadata is the information about a song stored inside the file — the title, artist, album, track number, year, genre, and the cover art your player shows. When a track appears as "Unknown Artist," files sort in the wrong order, or the wrong album art pops up, that's metadata, not the audio itself. Fixing it is quick, and done right, it never touches the audio at all.

The quick version

  1. Open the metadata editor and drop your file in.
  2. Edit the fields — title, artist, album, track number, year, genre — and swap the cover art if you like.
  3. Save. It runs in your browser, so nothing uploads.

What "tags" actually are

The tags live in a small block inside the file, separate from the audio data. In MP3s this block is called ID3 (ID3v2 is the modern version); FLAC and OGG use Vorbis comments; MP4/M4A/AAC use their own atom-based tags. They all do the same job — describe the track — just in different containers. That's why a file can play perfectly while showing completely wrong information: the audio and the tags are independent.

Flat illustration of an audio file card split into two zones: a block of blank tag fields above a separate zone holding the glowing audio waveform

The key principle: don't re-encode the audio

This is the one thing that separates a good metadata edit from a bad one. Editing tags should never re-compress your audio. A proper tag editor rewrites only the metadata block and leaves the audio bytes bit-for-bit identical — so a lossless FLAC stays exactly as lossless, and an MP3 doesn't lose a generation of quality just because you fixed a typo in the title. If a tool re-encodes on save, you're needlessly degrading the file to change text. (This matters for the same reasons covered in the best file formats for audio editing.)

Flat illustration of a pencil editing the tag fields on a music file while the glowing audio waveform below sits untouched behind a protective shield

What you can edit — and read-only formats

Formats differ in how openly they can be written:

  • Fully editable: MP3 (ID3v2), FLAC, and OGG-Vorbis have well-documented, writable tag formats.
  • Often read-only: some container formats (certain M4A/MP4/AAC, WMA, AIFF, or Opus files) can be read reliably but are riskier to write without corrupting the file, so a careful editor may show their tags without letting you overwrite them.

A good editor decides this based on the actual codec inside the file, not just the extension — because a .m4a and a .mp3 renamed to .m4a are very different things underneath.

Common things metadata fixes

  • "Unknown Artist" / wrong titles on ripped or downloaded files.
  • Broken sort order in your music library (fix the album, artist, and track-number fields).
  • Missing or wrong cover art — embed the right image so players display it.
  • Tidying a batch before importing into a library or loading onto a device.

Frequently asked questions

What are ID3 tags? ID3 is the metadata format inside MP3 files — the block that stores title, artist, album, cover art, and more, separate from the audio.

Does editing metadata change the audio quality? It shouldn't. A proper metadata editor rewrites only the tag block and leaves the audio bytes untouched, so there's zero quality loss.

Why can't I edit tags on some files? Some formats (like certain M4A/AAC, WMA, or AIFF files) are safe to read but risky to write, so a careful editor keeps them read-only rather than corrupting them.

Can I add album art to an MP3? Yes — embed an image in the file's ID3 tags and your player will display it as the cover.