How to find the bitrate of an mp3 file via command line?

What is the terminal command that can used to find the bitrate of an mp3 file?

Is there any other option available other than mpg321 -t name.mp3?

5 Answers

MediaInfo is further solution to do that (not only on mp3).

sudo apt-get install mediainfo 

Example:

mediainfo Aphrodite_-_Superman_\(dnb\).mp3 | grep "Bit rate" 

Output:

Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 192 Kbps 

Another Example:

mediainfo Aphrodite_-_Superman_\(dnb\).mp3 | grep 'Bit rate ' 

Another Output:

Bit rate : 192 Kbps 

Get exactly the audio bitrate via mediainfo in bps:

mediainfo --Output='Audio;%BitRate%' '/MY/MEDIA/FILE.MP3' 

or in Kbps:

mediainfo --Output='Audio;%BitRate/String%' '/MY/MEDIA/FILE.MP3' 

Simply put:

file song.mp3 

Note: file is included with Ubuntu.

For alias lovers, insert this at the end of your ~/.bashrc file:

bitrate () { echo `basename "$1"`: `file "$1" | sed 's/.*, \(.*\)kbps.*/\1/' | tr -d " " ` kbps } 

Open a new Terminal window. You may now run the following command:

bitrate song.mp3 

Install mp3info package

sudo apt-get install mp3info 

To find the bitrate use

mp3info -r a -p "%f %r\n" *.mp3 

will give the info you need, also has some other useful functions man mp3info for more info

You can install the package libimage-exiftool-perl:

sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl 

Then run:

exiftool -AudioBitrate GoldLion.mp3 

It will output something like:

Audio Bitrate : 192 kbps 

The best info, by-far, is provided by ffprobe (part of the ffmpeg package). mpg123 is also nice, but hard to grep output, which is probably why you were asking for something else.

$ mpg123 -t example.mp3 2>&1 | grep -A1 -E "^MPEG" MPEG 2.5 L III cbr32 11025 mono $ ffprobe example.mp3 2>&1 | grep Stream Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 11025 Hz, mono, s16p, 32 kb/s 

For pro-use, do this:

# ffprobe -v quiet -print_format json -show_format -show_streams example.mp3 { "streams": [ { "index": 0, "codec_name": "mp3", "codec_long_name": "MP3 (MPEG audio layer 3)", "codec_type": "audio", "codec_time_base": "1/11025", "codec_tag_string": "[0][0][0][0]", "codec_tag": "0x0000", "sample_fmt": "s16p", "sample_rate": "11025", "channels": 1, "channel_layout": "mono", "bits_per_sample": 0, "r_frame_rate": "0/0", "avg_frame_rate": "0/0", "time_base": "1/14112000", "start_pts": 0, "start_time": "0.000000", "duration_ts": 55294344, "duration": "3.918250", "bit_rate": "32000", "disposition": { "default": 0, "dub": 0, "original": 0, "comment": 0, "lyrics": 0, "karaoke": 0, "forced": 0, "hearing_impaired": 0, "visual_impaired": 0, "clean_effects": 0, "attached_pic": 0, "timed_thumbnails": 0 } } ], "format": { "filename": "example.mp3", "nb_streams": 1, "nb_programs": 0, "format_name": "mp3", "format_long_name": "MP2/3 (MPEG audio layer 2/3)", "start_time": "0.000000", "duration": "3.918250", "size": "17260", "bit_rate": "35240", "probe_score": 51, "tags": { "title": "Sound Effects - Female Operatic La 1 - Opera singer sings La.", "artist": "Download Sound Effects - SoundDogs - AOS", "album": "", "track": "0", "copyright": "(c) 2010 Sounddogs.com, All Rights Reserved", "genre": "SFX - Humans; Vocalizations", "comment": "Royalty Free Sound Effects - Sounddogs.com", "date": "2008" } } }