Incomplete remote file (mp3) ID3 information

Question

Looking to get artist, title, album from ID3 information on a remote audio file. I don't want to download the entire file, so I only download the first 500 or so bytes. I can see the ID3 information when viewing the body, unfortunately when I call Mutagen https://code.google.com/p/mutagen/ pointing to the small file, an error is thrown

EOFError: Requested 0x1a501 of 0x1ce9 (file.mp3)

Is there any way to fix this file? Corrupted?

Answer 1

You're missing data. You might need more than 500 bytes, since the error indicates it's trying to load offset 107,777. I'm not familiar with Mutagen myself, but you might need to modify it to accept "broken" files.

Also, keep in mind that ID3v1 is stored at the end of the file, not the beginning. If you're dealing with ID3v2 exclusively, this isn't a problem.