How to join/merge many mp3 files?

Question

Searching Google on how to join/merge many mp3 files, it suggests that I should just cat them together.

That might "work", but clearly it is not the correct way to do it, as each header and set of IDv3 tags will also be concatenated.

Does a Linux program exist that can be scripted to join/merge many mp3?

Can mplayer/mencoder/ffmpeg do it?

Answer 1

This will concatenate two mp3 files, and the resulting metadata will be that of the first file:

ffmpeg -i "concat:file1.mp3|file2.mp3" -acodec copy output.mp3

This is because, for ffmpeg, the whole "concat:" part is a single "input file", and its metadata will be of the first concatenated file. If you want to use metadata from the second file instead, you have to add it as a dummy input file and map its metadata to that of the output:

ffmpeg -i "concat:file1.mp3|file2.mp3" -i file2.mp3 -acodec copy test.mp3 -map_metadata 0:1

If you want to construct your metadata from the two metadatas, you'll have to do it by hand. You can dump a file's metadata with

ffmpeg -i file1.mp3 -f ffmetadata file1.metadata

After dumping both metadatas and constructing new metadata, you can add it to the output file with -metadata, and you can disable metadata copying by setting a -map_metadata mapping from a negative input file number. This sets a name value and no other metadata:

ffmpeg -i "concat:file1.mp3|file2.mp3" -acodec copy -metadata "title=Some Song" test.mp3 -map_metadata 0:-1

Answer 2

Mp3Wrap - Command-line utility that wraps multiple MP3 files into a single, playable MP3, without losing filenames or ID3 information, and without reencoding. Also supports archiving non-audio data such as playlists, info files, and cover images inside the MP3. These files can be unpacked later (using mp3splt, e.g.); ordinary MP3 decoders can play the entire audio stream as one long track.

Answer 3

This will concatenate a folder full of MP3 into a single MP3 file:

1) Save a list of the MP3 files to concatenate, e.g.,

$ cat mylist.txt
file '/tmp/01.mp3'
file '/tmp/02.mp3'
file '/tmp/03.mp3'
file '/tmp/04.mp3'
file '/tmp/05.mp3'
file '/tmp/06.mp3'
file '/tmp/07.mp3'

2) Run the following command (-safe 0 is not required if mylist.txt uses relative paths instead):

$ ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i mylist.txt -c copy output.mp3

Answer 4

If you want to concat all mp3 files of the current directory:

function join_by { local IFS="$1"; shift; echo "$*"; }
files=(*.mp3)
ffmpeg -i "concat:`join_by "|" $files`" -acodec copy output.mp3

Answer 5

Based on Miles Wolbe's answer, here is a one-liner that worked for me:

ls *.mp3 | \
    sed -e "s/\(.*\)/file '\1'/" | \
    ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist 'file,pipe' -f concat -i - -c copy output.mp3

Answer 6

zsh:

audio-join() ffmpeg -i "concat:${(j:|:)@[2,-1]}" -acodec copy $1

audio-join output.mp3 *.mp3

Answer 7

If you need scripting, you're probably better off using the ffmpeg solution. However, if you ever just need an application to do stuff like that, you could try out Audacity. It's open source and cross platform. I haven't used it to join mp3s, but I've used it to crop sections out of an mp3 and fade them out at the end. I'm be willing to bet you can join mp3s and cross-fade them into each other with it as well.