Quick Way to Convert ID3v1 tags to ID3v2 tags

Originally posted on the Firefly forums here by EVILRipper with additions from gmd.

Introduction

ID3v1 tags have a number of limitations, with ID3v2 tags overcome. Modern players such as Winamp or iTunes will recognise either tags, but favour ID3v2, and write ID3v2 tags.

ID3v1 tags are limited in their length. ID3v2 can have longer Artist/Album/Title information, due to the lack of this limit.

What Is Needed

On Linux you need to make sure "id3v2" is installed.

Under Debian Linux it'd be accomplised with the following command:

apt-get install id3v2

The Conversion

Forum user gmd suggested the following code to find and update all files in a given location with ID3v2 tags from their ID3v1 tags. This was modified from the original submission by EVILRipper.

find /path/to/mp3s -iname "*.mp3" -print0 | xargs -0 id3v2 -C

The above should find and convert all mp3s ID3v1 tags to ID3v2 tags.

It should work on most UNIX/Linux/BSD systems. For Windows something else might be needed, or a GUI program might exist to do the same job.