Many common file formats have one, two or more metadata storage formats.<p>JPEG&#x2F;JPG stores Exif (camera data), IPTC &amp; XMP (authors data).<p>MP3 stores ID3 (authors data)<p>Editing the metadata doesn&#x27;t reduce the quality of the file content itself. So you won&#x27;t get a degenerated music file or a lower quality picture. So I really don&#x27;t understand your sentense: &quot;I don&#x27;t want to alter metadata as part of regular operation.&quot;