An MP3 (.mp3) carries its metadata in ID3 tags, and the interesting ones are not the artist and title a player shows. ID3 has dedicated ownership frames that name the licensee a file is registered to - frequently an email - along with the encoder, a rating frame keyed to a person's email, and free-form private and embedded-object frames that quietly hold local file paths. Its cover art is a separate image with its own metadata.
Scan a MP3 fileID3 was built to record ownership, and those frames survive long after a player stops showing them. The file-owner frame (TOWN) names the licensee the file is registered to and is frequently an email address; the ownership frame (OWNE) describes a transaction - price paid, purchase date and seller - rather than the music; the encoded-by frame (TENC) names the person or tool that made the file; and the popularimeter (POPM) stores a play count and rating keyed to the email of whoever's player wrote it. The publisher and the production (phonogram) copyright notice are read as well.
The structural frames are where paths and payloads hide. A general encapsulated object (GEOB) can carry an arbitrary payload and often includes the local file path of the source material, and a private frame (PRIV) is identified by an owner string that names the software that wrote it. The scan lists which tag containers are present, and if both an old ID3v1 trailer and a newer ID3v2 block exist it flags the mismatch: editors usually rewrite only the newer block, so the trailer can keep values that were supposedly changed, and players that read only ID3v1 will still show them.
Cover art is not just a picture. Album artwork is frequently a photograph, and this scan opens the embedded image and reads its own metadata - so EXIF fields, a camera serial and even GPS coordinates from the artwork travel inside the MP3 and survive any edit to the audio tags. The recording identifier (ISRC) is read too, tying the file to the released track in industry databases regardless of renaming.
The ordinary content tags - artist, album title, genre, comment, composer, year - are all surfaced, but the point of a scan is the fields a music player never puts on screen: the owner, the transaction, the encoder, the embedded path, and whatever the artwork brought with it.
This is a selection. The full field manual documents the fields read from each format.
ID3 tags. Beyond the visible artist, title and album, that includes ownership frames naming the licensee (often an email), the encoder, a rating frame keyed to an email, private and embedded-object frames that can hold local file paths, and the recording's ISRC. The cover art carries its own image metadata too.
Often yes. The file-owner frame names the licensee (frequently an email), the ownership frame records a purchase, the encoded-by frame names who encoded it, and the popularimeter's owner field is the email of whoever rated it in their player.
It can. Album artwork is usually a photograph, so it may carry its own EXIF, a camera serial and GPS coordinates. This scan reads the embedded image, and anything it finds there stays in the file even if you edit the audio tags.
This tool views the tags rather than stripping them in the browser. A tag editor or ffmpeg -map_metadata -1 clears ID3 locally. Watch for a leftover ID3v1 trailer: some tools rewrite only the ID3v2 block, leaving old values that ID3v1-only players still show.
GEOB is a general encapsulated object that can hold any payload and often embeds the local path of the source file. PRIV is a private frame tagged with an owner string that names the software - a player or store - that wrote it.
File X-Ray reads MP3 files entirely in your browser - the file never leaves your device. For this format you can also download a clean copy with the metadata removed. Scan a file now.