I don't know if it's the only way, but it claims to be "6 times faster than id3lib and 3 times faster than libvorbisfile at reading tags". (libvorbisfile is the kind-of-official library for accessing ogg vorbis files.)

I suggested taglib, rather than libvorbisfile, because I believe that taglib also covers all the MP3 tags that are handled by id3lib. Hence, if you wanted, you could just use one library (taglib) to handle all kinds of files. Out of interest, what are the _two_ id3 libs that you are already using?

I'm only guessing, but perhaps that would be too slow, given that a tag/comment library is often used when scanning large numbers of media files?

- Neil