[dragonZ28]

I ditched the iPod and went to this method. It's faster, and more compact. Not to mention, much cheaper.

Here is what I bought for a total investment of $30:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ilpage_o00_s00

Okay, pictures tell 1,000 words, so I screen captured step by step.

Basically, get your USB Flash Drive and install your music library onto it. It may take a long time depending on how much music you have.

Once done, open Notepad. Go to the properties of the song you want on your list, and copy the file path starting with the band's or artist's name and everything afterward including the album. Copy this entire file path, and paste it into Notepad.

Then, this is important - PLACE A "(backslash)" AFTERWARD.

Then, return to the song's properties and copy the entire file name including the .mp3 extension, and paste it after the above "(backslash)".

You do this for every song you want on your playlist. 1 song for each line in note pad. Press enter/return to go to the next line. Then repeat the process for the next song. At the bottom of my pictures, I have a 3 song playlist that will play the follwing songs in order:

1-Tears Don't Fall
2-More Human Than Human
3-Wait and Bleed

When all of your songs are on the Notepad document, go to "File", and "Save as". Select your source device that your music is already on, which should be your USB flash Drive. Choose under "Save as type" the "All files" option. Name your playlist and end it with the extension .m3u - This is critical, or your playlist won't work. This is how most cars' software decodes that it is a playlist.

Once it is saved to the flash drive along with your music library, put the drive into an open USB port on your car, and give it some time to index. This can take a while depending on how much music you have on the drive. It may seem like it isn't working at first, and if it does, then it hasn't finished indexing. Be patient. Once it is done, you select the USB from the media selection, browse, playlists, and select it. It will now play your songs in the order you placed them in Notepad.

No more iPod, no more cord. And best of all, no more iTunes.

[dragonZ28]

Continued:

You will save this to the source device with your music on it, which will be your USB Flash Drive. It will reference the files paths to play the songs on your .m3u file.

Notice the "Save as type" dropdown is set to "All Files"
Also, note the extension after the playlist name, which is .m3u - this is how the player knows it is a playlist.

[suzook]

Great writeup...thanks.

[mt3130]

Very cool. What information does the screen play while playing .mp3 files from a flash drive? For example, does it show the file name "Bullet For My Valentine - Tears Don't Fall.mp3" or does it show the metadata embedded within the file, such as song name, artist, album, and album cover?

[dragonZ28]

Originally Posted by mt3130

Very cool. What information does the screen play while playing .mp3 files from a flash drive? For example, does it show the file name "Bullet For My Valentine - Tears Don't Fall.mp3" or does it show the metadata embedded within the file, such as song name, artist, album, and album cover?

Providing you have all artwork in the proper folders, it will display art and metadata titles. It works great

[MiamiBlueCamaro]

Excellent post!

[CamaroATL]

Hate to say it but this seems like a lot of work for creating a playlist. I currently just right-click the song in itunes, send to playlist and i'm done with it. I'll probably use a combination of the flash drive and my ipod. Maybe put movies on the flash drive and continue to use itunes for playlists. I update my playlists frequently so to have to do this in a notepad everytime I want to add a song to a specific playlist would suck.

[dragonZ28]

Originally Posted by CamaroATL

Hate to say it but this seems like a lot of work for creating a playlist. I currently just right-click the song in itunes, send to playlist and i'm done with it. I'll probably use a combination of the flash drive and my ipod. Maybe put movies on the flash drive and continue to use itunes for playlists. I update my playlists frequently so to have to do this in a notepad everytime I want to add a song to a specific playlist would suck.

It is a bit of work, but the iPod classics don't perform properly in this car. For whatever reason, it intermittently stops and resets. Research tells me it has something to do with the power requirements of the iPod classics. I have a 160GB version that has severe issues in the 2016 Camaro. Outside of that car, it works flawlessly.

[SuperSound]

Originally Posted by dragonZ28

It is a bit of work, but the iPod classics don't perform properly in this car. For whatever reason, it intermittently stops and resets. Research tells me it has something to do with the power requirements of the iPod classics. I have a 160GB version that has severe issues in the 2016 Camaro. Outside of that car, it works flawlessly.

That's most likely it. Has affected other manufacturers too.

Seems like there would be some kind of app that could make a playlist in this format. I know I have playlists with almost 500 songs on some.

[FlightSoftware]

Originally Posted by dragonZ28

Providing you have all artwork in the proper folders, it will display art and metadata titles. It works great

I have folder.jpg files in each of my folders, but the artwork doesn't show up. Is that the file name you're using? How big (width x height) are they?

[Tr6]

Thanks a MILL for this sir!

[BlkReaper]

************************************************** ***************
EASIER SOLUTION
************************************************** ***************


Every music program that you can make a playlist in should be able to export that playlist.

Itunes:

Click your playlist
go to file>library>export playlist
export it as a m3u file

open this m3u file in notepad

look at one of your songs and take notice of the path. It should look something like this;

C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\artist\album\song

press ctrl+h to replace "C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music" with nothing.

This will remove the unneeded part of the file path since this will be on your flash drive the path is no longer whats on your computer. This will work as long as your files are sorted on the flash drive by artist>album>song. If not change your path accordingly

[Hyper16]

Originally Posted by BlkReaper

************************************************** ***************
EASIER SOLUTION
************************************************** ***************


Every music program that you can make a playlist in should be able to export that playlist.

Itunes:

Click your playlist
go to file>library>export playlist
export it as a m3u file

open this m3u file in notepad

look at one of your songs and take notice of the path. It should look something like this;

C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\artist\album\song

press ctrl+h to replace "C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music" with nothing.

This will remove the unneeded part of the file path sense this will be on your flash drive the path is no longer whats on your computer. This will work as long as your files are sorted on the flash drive by artist>album>song. If not change your path accordingly

That is beautiful in it's simplicity. I have used many different methods to accomplish this but yours is perfect.

[Fraxum]

Originally Posted by BlkReaper

************************************************** ***************
EASIER SOLUTION
************************************************** ***************


Every music program that you can make a playlist in should be able to export that playlist.

Itunes:

Click your playlist
go to file>library>export playlist
export it as a m3u file

open this m3u file in notepad

look at one of your songs and take notice of the path. It should look something like this;

C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\artist\album\song

press ctrl+h to replace "C:\Users\PCname\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music" with nothing.

This will remove the unneeded part of the file path sense this will be on your flash drive the path is no longer whats on your computer. This will work as long as your files are sorted on the flash drive by artist>album>song. If not change your path accordingly

Thanks! A big help if you use Itunes, especially on a PC. Now what we need is a little program to automatically modify the m3u and copy it and just the listed files and artwork from the Itunes library to the car flash drive.

That way your car wont have to index files you never listen to. I might write that if no one has already. But sorry PC only. I have given up on Macs.