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My mp3 file has id3 tags which can be displayed in a terminal on my debian buster linux for example by using the program id3tool or id3. If my shell (xfce4-terminal) has a set default character encoding to UTF-8, the output of id3tool looks like this:

Filename: test.mp3
Song Title: Qu�l Dich Fit
Artist:     Wise Guys
Album:      Frei!
Track:      16
Year:       2008
Genre:      Rock (0x11)

By choosing a default character encoding for the terminal to ISO-8859-1, the output of id3tool is:

Filename: test.mp3
Song Title: Quäl Dich Fit
Artist:     Wise Guys
Album:      Frei!
Track:      16
Year:       2008
Genre:      Rock (0x11)

The invalid character of the title name is gone and replaced with the correct one. I want to be able to see the correct song title without having to switch the terminal encoding.

The mp3 file is not a text file. It is a binary with id3 tags, which apparently are encoded in ISO-8859-1. The command

file -bi test.mp3

yields

audio/mpeg; charset=binary

Can I transform the encoding of this file to UTF-8? "iconv" works only for text files.

What else should I do to be able to work with the id3 tags of my mp3 files without invalid characters?

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    extract metadata to txt file with ffmpeg, convert it with iconv, then re-add. Commented Aug 17, 2020 at 21:11
  • ... or even read with id3tool and write back with id3tool. Commented Aug 17, 2020 at 22:15
  • That does the trick! Thanks to Ipor and Philip. I did it with id3tool. I wrote a bash script which I can call in a shell with either ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8 encoding and end up with a file that displays just fine in an UTF-8 encoded shell. Ipor, please copy your comment into an answer, just so I can mark this question as solved. Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 12:17

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extract metadata to txt file with ffmpeg, convert it with iconv, then re-add.

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