Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your MEI file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert MEI to another file type
To convert your MEI file to another format, you need Verovio or other Text software.
Convert a file to MEI
To convert other file formats to the "Music Notation XML" file type, you need software like Verovio or a similar tool.
About MEI files
The .MEI file extension most commonly denotes a Music Encoding Initiative file, a highly structured XML format used by musicologists and digital librarians to encode musical notation. Unlike standard audio files, an MEI file contains semantic text data - tags and attributes describing pitch, duration, and scholarly annotations - rather than sound waves. While this format is excellent for academic preservation and critical editing, it presents significant friction for practical musicians: raw XML is unreadable to the human eye, and standard notation software like MuseScore or Sibelius often requires complex plugins to import it. Additionally, file sizes can become unwieldy due to the verbose text structure. To make these files usable for performance or listening, users should convert them to PDF for printing sheet music, MusicXML for editing in mainstream composition tools, or MIDI for audio playback. A secondary, unrelated use of the extension is for Metasys Encrypted Images by Johnson Controls, which are proprietary system update files that cannot be viewed or converted by standard means.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MEI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert MEI file to MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WMA, M4A, AIFF, OPUS, ALAC, APE or WV, you can use Verovio or similar software from the "Musical Notation Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MIDI, AAC, TTA, AU, WV, DTS, MID, FLAC, RA, MP3, PCM or WAV files to MEI, try Verovio or another comparable tool in the "Musical Notation Storage" category.
The MEI Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our MEI converter.