5 MB MP3 sample file

An MP3 file of exactly 5,242,880 bytes. It is a valid MPEG-1 Audio Layer III file, generated for this site and checked with an independent parser.

sample-mp3-5mb.mp3

5 MB5,242,880 bytes

Download 5 MB MP3

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Type: audio/mpeg
SHA-256: 7631b56129f8e7856b20b7666189b4739bf057d5b8e8c14f9696e9c377ef93cd
Direct URL: https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/mp3/sample-mp3-5mb.mp3

What is in this file

12,543 MPEG audio frames (5 min 28 s) of a synthesised musical phrase that repeats every eight seconds, after an ID3v2.3 tag. 322 bytes of zero bytes in the tag's standard padding area bring the file to the exact size.

Duration	5 min 28 s
Bit rate	128 kbit/s constant
Sample rate	44,100 Hz
Channels	Stereo
Format	MPEG-1 Audio Layer III
Tags	ID3v2.3 (title, artist, album, genre)

First bytes of the file

The first 64 bytes of sample-mp3-5mb.mp3 as a hex dump: offset, bytes, then the same bytes as text. The MP3 signature is 49 44 33.

00000000  49 44 33 03 00 00 00 00 03 2a 54 49 54 32 00 00  |ID3......*TIT2..|
00000010  00 12 00 00 00 53 61 6d 70 6c 65 20 4d 50 33 20  |.....Sample MP3 |
00000020  28 35 20 4d 42 29 54 50 45 31 00 00 00 10 00 00  |(5 MB)TPE1......|
00000030  00 53 61 6d 70 6c 65 54 65 73 74 46 69 6c 65 73  |.SampleTestFiles|

Preview

Loads the whole 5 MB file in your browser.

Where 5 MB matters

A 5,242,880-byte file: the size of a phone photo and the minimum part size for S3 multipart uploads. These are the default limits a file of this size is useful for testing:

System	Limit	Note
PHP	2 MB per uploaded file by default (upload_max_filesize)	A 5 MB upload fails on an untuned PHP installation.
Vercel Functions	4.5 MB request body	Larger uploads must go directly to object storage.
Amazon S3 multipart upload	5 MiB minimum part size	This file is exactly one minimum part.
AWS Lambda	6 MB synchronous invocation payload	5 MB of binary data exceeds it once base64-encoded.
Browser localStorage	About 5 MB per origin	Storing this file as text fills the quota.
Django	2.5 MB in memory by default	Larger uploads are streamed to a temporary file instead of held in memory.

All 5 MB sample files

Use this file for

Simulating photo uploads from phones
Testing transcoding and podcast pipelines
Testing audio upload and playback

Testing notes for MP3

Duration is not stored in a header. Players estimate it from bit rate and file size, which goes wrong for variable-bit-rate files that lack a Xing header.
A large ID3 tag with artwork can push the first audio frame far into the file, confusing naive sniffers.

MP3 format reference

Technical details

File name	sample-mp3-5mb.mp3
Format	MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III)
Extension	.mp3
MIME type	audio/mpeg
Size	5,242,880 bytes (5 MB)
Kind	Binary
Signature	49 44 33
SHA-256	7631b56129f8e7856b20b7666189b4739bf057d5b8e8c14f9696e9c377ef93cd
Created	2026-10-10
Validation	Exact size, signature bytes and structure checked when the file was generated
Preview	Available on this page
Source	Generated for this site; not copied from elsewhere
Licence	Free to use, modify and redistribute (terms)
Category	Audio

Validated for expected format and integrity. As with any download, scan the file with your own security tools before opening it. How files are made and checked

Download from the command line and verify

Fetch the file with curl, then compare its checksum with the SHA-256 value above.

curl -o sample-mp3-5mb.mp3 'https://sampletestfiles.com/downloads/mp3/sample-mp3-5mb.mp3'
sha256sum sample-mp3-5mb.mp3     # Linux
shasum -a 256 sample-mp3-5mb.mp3 # macOS

On Windows, run Get-FileHash sample-mp3-5mb.mp3 -Algorithm SHA256 in PowerShell. A matching value proves that the download is complete and unaltered.

Related files

Questions about this file

Is this file exactly 5 MB?: Yes. It is 5,242,880 bytes, which is 5 MB in the binary units that operating systems and server limits use (1 KB = 1,024 bytes).
What is inside the 5 MB MP3 file?: 12,543 MPEG audio frames (5 min 28 s) of a synthesised musical phrase that repeats every eight seconds, after an ID3v2.3 tag. 322 bytes of zero bytes in the tag's standard padding area bring the file to the exact size.
What is on the MP3 samples?: A short synthesised musical phrase that repeats. It was generated by code for this site, so it is free of any music copyright.

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