Turns out that (unless my benchmarking is off) MP3::Info is much faster than MP3::Tag. pudge was quite pleased...

If the following benchmark is completely off, I can only claim exhaustion, as it was wirtten at an hour when I should have been asleep. :-)

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use MP3::Info;
use MP3::Tag;
use Benchmark;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $track = shift;

timethese(
    shift || 10000,
    {   info => sub {
            my $tag      = get_mp3tag($track);
            my $tracknum = $tag->{TRACKNUM};
        },
        autotag => sub {
            my $mp3      = MP3::Tag->new($track);
            my $tracknum = ( $mp3->autoinfo )[1];
        },
        manualtag => sub {
            my $mp3 = MP3::Tag->new($track);
            $mp3->get_tags;

            if ( exists $mp3->{ID3v1} ) {

                # read some information from the tag
                my $id3v1 = $mp3
                    ->{ID3v1};    # $id3v1 is only a shortcut for $mp3
+->{ID3v1}
                my $tracknum = $mp3->{ID3v1}->track;
            }

            if ( exists $mp3->{ID3v2} ) {

                # read some information from the tag
                my $tacknum = $mp3->{ID3v2}->get_frame("TRCK");

                # delete the tag completely from the file
                $mp3->{ID3v2}->remove_tag;
            }

            $mp3->close();
            }
    }
);
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