Telegram bot API not updating audio metadata (performer and title)

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1

I’m having trouble with the Telegram bot API when trying to modify audio metadata. When I send audio files through my bot, I want to set custom performer and title fields, but they don’t seem to update properly.

I’ve tested this multiple ways including direct browser API calls to make sure it’s not a coding error on my part. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

I’m using Python with the telebot library. Here’s my sample code:

import telebot
import config

# Bot initialization
my_bot = telebot.TeleBot(config.api_key)

@my_bot.message_handler(content_types=["text"])
def process_message(msg):
    result = my_bot.send_audio(
        msg.from_user.id, 
        audio_file_url, 
        caption=None, 
        duration=None, 
        performer="Artist Name", 
        title="Song Title",
        reply_to_message_id=None
    )
    print(result.audio.performer)
    print(result.audio.title)

my_bot.polling(none_stop=True, interval=0)

The metadata fields just won’t change from the original values. Any ideas what might be causing this?

2

Yeah, this is a known issue with Telegram’s Bot API. When your audio file already has metadata embedded, the API ignores whatever parameters you send and uses the existing ID3 tags instead. I ran into this exact problem building a music bot last year. Telegram’s servers read the file’s metadata first, so if there’s already performer/title info in there, that’s what gets displayed no matter what you specify in your API call. The workaround I found was copying the audio data to a clean file without any metadata, then sending that through the API with my custom parameters. Without existing tags to override, Telegram actually uses what you specify.

3

had this problem too! Telegram does retain the original metadata. Try stripping it out first, I used ffmpeg to remove it and then uploaded through the bot. Totally fixed the issue for me!

4

I encountered the same problem while developing a podcast bot. The Telegram API tends to prioritize the embedded metadata over your specified parameters. To resolve this, I recommend using the mutagen library to clear the existing metadata tags. You can achieve this by using audiofile = mutagen.File(your_file), followed by audiofile.delete() and audiofile.save() to remove all tags. After doing this, your custom performer and title should be recognized correctly when you call send_audio. Just remember to apply this to a copy of the file, as it permanently deletes the original tags. This method is more dependable than using ffmpeg and avoids the need for additional dependencies.