Improved metadata handling in Audacity

^{Originally posted by **petersampsonaudacity** June 1, 2021}
Audacity really needs some attention paying to its handling of metadata (inbound and outbound). Metadata support is known to be patchy in Audacity.

1) there are several (currently 11 at time of writing - now 13) unfixed metadata bugs listed in the Bugzilla bugtracker:
https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=metadata&list_id=28314

This is a prime example:
Bug 701 - Metadata: Embedded album art and lyrics metadata discarded
https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=701
This bug has lain untended/unfixed for seven and a half years

2) There is also a discussion proposal from 2018 in our Wiki: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Proposal_Metadata_Options

3) We often get posts on the Forum about poor handling of metadata - this latest example from today is the one that triggered me to write this up:
https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=118012

Part of the problem is there is no universal standard for all metadata fields. Audacity does handle consistently the fields that are there by default in the metadata editor - but additional fields are not always handled properly/consistently - for example album art and lyrics are just discarded as stated above in Bug 701.