Microsoft & .NETVisual BasicTIP: Working with MP3

TIP: Working with MP3

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Does your program need to work with MP3 files? Creating your own audio program or music library and need to automatically extract details such as the artist, track title and album? Perhaps you even need to overwrite such ID3 tags?

The winner of our SmartUI competition, MuchMetal shows us how with this neat class.

To get details of a particular MP3, firstly, set the Filename property. Then check that the isActive property is set to True, indicating you have referenced a valid MP3 file. Next, read the appropriate properties, such as Title, Artist, Album and Genre.

You can also change any of these properties, then save them back to the original file with the SaveTag method.

To learn how to play MP3 files from within Visual Basic, check out this neat tutorial from our partner in code, VBWeb.co.uk.

Sample Code

Dim MP3 As New clsID3
MP3.Filename = "c:ChrisRea.mp3"

If MP3.isActive = True Then
	'Get ID3 information about MP3
	MsgBox "MP3 Info:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
		"Title:" & vbTab & MP3.Title & vbCrLf & _
		"Artist:" & vbTab & MP3.Artist & vbCrLf & _
		"Album:" & vbTab & MP3.Album & vbCrLf & _
		"Year:" & vbTab & MP3.Year & vbCrLf & _
		"Genre:" & vbTab & MP3.Genre & vbCrLf & _
		"Comment:" & vbTab & MP3.Comment

	'Change the ID3 information
	MP3.Artist = "New Artist 2"
	MP3.Title = "New Title 2"
	MP3.Album = "Some Album 2"
	MP3.Comment = "Created using clsID3 2"
	MP3.Year = "2000"
	MP3.Genre = 54

	MP3.SaveTag ' Saves the new ID3 information

Else ' Error opening MP3 file
	MsgBox "Invalid MP3 file"
End If

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