Playing music from USB drive ?

[Area51BS]

Any luck getting one to work. Drop some music from iTunes onto one. Bronco sees it, indexing completed. But nothing plays. Any tips?

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[RagnarKon]

The USB drive needs to be formatted FAT32 or exFAT. And the audio itself needs to be DRM-free and in the right format. Any of the common audio formats work though... MP3, ACC, WAV, FLAC, etc.

The most common problem is people try to use music with DRM on it, which won't work. If you buy music off of iTunes, it should come DRM-free. But if you have an Apple Music subscription and didn't actually buy the music, it'll still have DRM on it.

 

[crenca]

Like @RagnarKon points to, check the format of the files 'dropped from iTunes' to verify they are open formats that the Bronco can decode

 

[Area51BS]

Format is good. Will verify the DRM from CD tracks I loaded on iTunes myself. Can’t say if I purchased any off top of my head. Apple Music subscription I assume is not same as bought music and/or uploaded CD’s

 

[cmtaz]

I'm using 320kb mp3's on a 256 GB drive. Works just fine. Format might be exFAT or FAT32, can't remember.

 

[Philvis77]

My Napster/Limewire MP3s work like a charm with a USB thumb drive. Ive never tried DRM MP3s.

 

[BroncoChallenger]

Yeah if it has DRM on it then it won't play, which is why I don't use Apple Music to rip CDs. There are other software packages out there (wish I still had one that also had burn software built into it from my XP machine) that don't put the DRM on it.

If you PURCHASE music through Apple Music it shouldn't have it. But it wouldn't surprise me if it's still hidden in there somewhere.

 

[cmtaz]

Windows Media Player will rip MP3's@ 320kb without DRM.

 

[Area51BS]

So it did work with music I uploaded from CD to iTunes.

 

[crzyhawk]

I keep a thumb drive with some music in mine, but usually just stream from my phone. It works well, though I haven't bothered to set up proper playlists yet from the thumbdrive. That process looked a bit more involved. I didn't have any issues getting it to work, but for full disclosure, I've either ripped my music from CD or purchased from Amazon. I never buy music from itunes due to DRM. It annoys me on general principle.

 

[Scott R Nelson]

. . . though I haven't bothered to set up proper playlists yet from the thumbdrive.

I haven't been able to get playlists to work like I want on mine. I just fill a 16 GB thumb drive with what I want to listen to for a while, set it to random mode, and let it go. Lasts me for months sometimes.

All of my files are MP3 format. Occasionally it can't find all of the files - don't know why. Also, occasionally it can't figure out title and artist with ID3v1 information - don't know why that happens either.

But the music plays correctly. I can't count on music from my phone, because I'm often out in the hills where there is no cell coverage.

 

[crzyhawk]

I have the music saved to my phone, I don't stream it over the internet. I use the thumbdrive as a backup, when i was in the office when I went out to lunch and forgot to grab my phone, I wanted some tunes to listen to. on the rare occassions when I actually need the thumbdrive music, I do it the same way you do, just set to random and let it rip.

I've been fiddling with it this afternoon trying to get the playlist working, and it keeps throwing playlist is corrupt messages. I haven't really googled through that yet. My test playlist looks right from the tutorials I have seen on it, but I need to take a deep look and see what I have wrong, or to see if perhaps the ford system can't read the m3u file correctly.

 

[Bugkillah]

If the music is iTunes, why not keep it on your phone and play from iTunes? Also, the drm music is typically the $0.99 songs and the $1.25 music is the drm free.

 

[crzyhawk]

I personally do stream the music from itunes via apple carplay and use the USB as a backup. Say for example, I drop my phone in a lake, then I am simply out of music and forced to listen to radio while I make the drive of shame home. No thank you.

That is not the question that the OP asked though, and streaming from apple or android may not be a good option for him for a variety of reasons. Getting USB streaming to work is easy. Dump the music onto a FAT32 formatted thumb drive, and it just works. Getting playlists to work, appears to be problematic. I can get sync to see the playlists and offer them as options. But if I try to select the playlist it tells me that the playlist is corrupt. Something I am providing in the playlist, sync simply doesn't like and I am not sure what exactly that is. My guess right now is that it's choking on escape characters for whitespace in file names, but I can't confirm that yet.

 

[Area51BS]

I do use iTunes/Carplay with majority of library downloaded on phone. I just wanted to play around with USB drive. And sometimes I get tired of the constant need to reboot radio if I make frequent stops on trip. Wanted to give this a try.

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