How to organize music on a USB drive

[GoBlue88]

There is probably a thread on this somewhere, but I am having trouble finding specifics.

I've got the low-profile SanDisc Cruzer 64 GB thumb drive plugged in to the passenger side USB port. Before plugging it in, I copied my entire iTunes music folder onto it and the car locates the albums and plays the music just fine. However I am finding the interface to be very frustrating.

Here's an example: In iTunes I've got several double albums (like Billy Joel's Greatest Hits), which iTunes plays in the correct order from start to finish. However the MS interface sorts the songs by song number and ignores whether the song came from "disc 1" or "disc 2". As such, it plays disc 1 song 1, then disc 2 song 1, then disc 1 song 2, then disc 2 song 2, and so on. I've tried separating the songs from each disc into separate folders and appending "disc 1" or "disc 2" onto the end of the album name, but I still get the same play order result in the car. I even erased everything on the thumb drive, verified that the car showed nothing on the drive, then put 1 double album on it organized into 2 folders with the disc number appended to the album name, and it STILL played the songs in the wrong order.

Anybody know of the best way to organize music on the USB drive overall for Tesla's interface or how to fix this specific and annoying issue?

 

[GoBlue88]

Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

 

[Runs Kwh]

I just ordered the same low profile sandisk usb drive in 64.

I'll be doing exactly what you've done - copy over my itunes library. Do you happen to have clear instructions on how to do it that you could share? I'm a neophyte when it comes to music library process stuff.

 

[ITSELE]

The Tesla software doesn't recognize the "Disc 1 of 2/Disc 2 of 2" metadata. If it's really important to you, you can simply change the name of the album in iTunes to "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits (Disc 1)" and "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits (Disk 2)" and that will separate out disks.

I have my entire collection of 30,000+ songs on a 2TB hard drive so I've been dealing with this. I chose not to change the name of the albums because it looks more organized to leave as is in iTunes. Most of my collection is in Apple Lossless (ALAC) which the Model S does not recognize so I have to convert to FLAC files. Took an entire weekend to convert over. I hope some day we get an upgrade to the USB reader software Tesla is using to recognize more metadata, allow reading ALAC (which is open source), and allow searching and or playlists. It takes a LONG time to scroll through 30,000 songs to find that one song, even with starting the correct letter.

 

[GoBlue88]

I just ordered the same low profile sandisk usb drive in 64.

I'll be doing exactly what you've done - copy over my itunes library. Do you happen to have clear instructions on how to do it that you could share? I'm a neophyte when it comes to music library process stuff.

I just dragged and dropped the entire iTunes music subfolder onto the thumb drive and then plugged the drive into the car.

- - - Updated - - -

The Tesla software doesn't recognize the "Disc 1 of 2/Disc 2 of 2" metadata. If it's really important to you, you can simply change the name of the album in iTunes to "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits (Disc 1)" and "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits (Disk 2)" and that will separate out disks.

I have my entire collection of 30,000+ songs on a 2TB hard drive so I've been dealing with this. I chose not to change the name of the albums because it looks more organized to leave as is in iTunes. Most of my collection is in Apple Lossless (ALAC) which the Model S does not recognize so I have to convert to FLAC files. Took an entire weekend to convert over. I hope some day we get an upgrade to the USB reader software Tesla is using to recognize more metadata, allow reading ALAC (which is open source), and allow searching and or playlists. It takes a LONG time to scroll through 30,000 songs to find that one song, even with starting the correct letter.

Yeah, that sucks. I was hoping there was a better way to do this. Be nice to have iTunes as one of the apps in the car...

 

[mg012]

The thumb drive I had laying around was only 4gb so I decided to just drag and drop about 15 albums from my iTunes library to the drive as a test. I created a folder for each album on the drive and dragged all the songs for each album because iTunes would not let me drag and drop it by the album. It was tedious, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that when I accessed the drive on the Model S, it listed the albums, each with a pic of the album cover and showed that cover when I played any song. Don't know if the pics got copied with the songs or the MS went out on the net and found them. I'm guessing it was the former.

 

[bob_p]

The current software provides only basic support for USB music. There's only one playlist - "favorites", and that playlist is played alphabetically (not possible to re-order the playlist).

Music placed on the hard drive is searched by the software and can be displayed several ways (such as by album or artist), sorted alphabetically - and ignoring how the music is stored on the USB drive. Determining the details of individual music files can sometimes be wrong, which you may be able to fix by editing the music file on another system. And, if you have the same song in multiple places, it will show up duplicated.

If you want more control of what you play, the only two options you have are the favorites list and playing music by folder.

I've gone through all of my albums and selected my favorites tracks - which took a while - and usually play back using the USB favorites. Playing back the songs alphabetically is a little annoying, but it does create something like a "random" playback mode.

Clearly the functionality currently present if very limited - and should be improved considerably in a future software update (hopefully 6.0). Functionality like multiple playlists, reordering playlists, repeating songs, and randomly playing songs are relatively easy to implement.

 

[theheff]

There's some good software out there to quickly re-tag your music. Tagging your albums correctly will help with the sorting issues. For my albums that have multiple CDs, i just renamed the track numbers as "101", "201", etc... that works fine. I have 64GB of FLAC music that I completely organized because I'm anal about that stuff. I use this: www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

 

[Lerxt]

Can you just play music via bluetooth from your iPhone?

 

[jerry33]

Can you just play music via bluetooth from your iPhone?

Yes, but quality sucks compared to lossless FLAC on a thumb drive.

 

[theheff]

There's some good software out there to quickly re-tag your music. Tagging your albums correctly will help with the sorting issues. For my albums that have multiple CDs, i just renamed the track numbers as "101", "201", etc... that works fine. I have 64GB of FLAC music that I completely organized because I'm anal about that stuff. I use this: www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

I guess that site is down, but it's called "Mp3Tag"

 

[Todd Burch]

Improved audio format and metadata support is coming in a future update. I've been waiting almost 2 years for that update so far, though, so then again--maybe it's not coming.

What I *did* find out, however, is that the car caches the metadata based on the song's raw filename. For example, if you change the metadata but leave the filename the same, you will see the old metadata cached by the car. (Customer support can reset this cache, but you lose a lot of other stuff in the process).

Long story short--when changing metadata, also change the filename so the car sees it as a new song file and re-reads the metadata appropriately.

Seriously, the update's coming. And it has song shuffling too. Right Tesla? Right?

 

[jerry33]

What I *did* find out, however, is that the car caches the metadata based on the song's raw filename. For example, if you change the metadata but leave the filename the same, you will see the old metadata cached by the car. (Customer support can reset this cache, but you lose a lot of other stuff in the process).

5.9 blew away all the favourites and now it doesn't show artwork or even the minutes remaining for most of my songs. Also it almost never plays through them all, it loses connection to the thumb drive. I'm not particularly pleased as it wasn't all that bad until then.

 

[rene heijenberg]

I use a program GoodSync to synchronize music from my home computer to my Tesla USB stick. What I noticed is that when I delete music from my home computer and sync the USB-stick then the music will still play in the Tesla. Apparently the only way to get rid of old music is by formatting the entire disk first and replacing all music. With a 64 GB stick this is taking a lot of time. Are there any known alternatives?

 

[pramod1969]

If anyone wants to preserve the sequence of your playlists from your iTunes music collection, please do the following;
1. Download a free program media monkey(MM). http://www.mediamonkey.com/trialpay. These steps below work for MM version >4.1; See the attached pictures.
2. After you install it in your computer either let MM scan your PC music or manually add (file/add-rescan files to the library) the iTunes music folder from your default location (see picture).
Check boxes for folder scan features (scan continuously & at start up) so any changes you make to iTunes will be automatically updated.
3.After the initial scan is completed, MM will ask you "if you want to import iTunes playlists" (see picture). You should check that box so MM can access all your iTunes playlists.
4. If MM does not automatically import iTunes playlists for some reason, download a small program called "iPlaylist importer" and install it as an extension for mediamonkey.
http://trixmoto.net/mm/go.php?f=iPlaylistImporter16.mmip
Make sure you start MM with administrator privileges so the extension installs properly.Go to MM tools/scripts/iPlaylist importer and it will import all your iTunes playlists into MM playlists.
5. Now insert a FAT32 formatted flash/USB drive of your choice and capacity you like to use in Tesla. It will show up in the left column of MM under playlists and media servers.
6. Click on the USB drive and it will show 4 tabs on the top named "summary, autosync (device), autosync (library) and options".
7. Click on "autosync (-- device)" and choose if you want to sync all 3 collections (music,podcasts, playlists) or a single one (playlists).
8. You can either skip autosync library or enable it if you like!
9. MOST IMPORTANT STEP:Now click on "options" tab and select "file locations".
On the top field of "Sync files to" look for "music" tab and you will find "\Music\Album Artist\Album\Track# Artist\Title" etc.,in the white column next to the music tab.
Manually add the words ">Auto Number<" in between the existing string of words .
It will now look like "<Playlist>\<Auto Number> - <Artist> - <Title>".
This assigns a automatic incremental number to all the songs in your playlist in sequence so it will play in the same order in Tesla.
10. Also check the box "Enforce use of sync mask for files already on the device".
11. You can click on "playlists" tab (last one in options)and check box for "sync playlists" which will do automatic syncing each time you plug the device. Make sure to change the default in the "destination directory" to auto number version just like before.
12. If someone wants to just play the songs in random sequence it is also possible to incorporate it into the directory field by typing >Random<.

13. Any changes you make over time to iTunes music should automatically sync to MM and then to your FAT32 flash drive whenever you plug it into the computer.
Since changes to the playlists may not update automatically, go to "file/add-rescan files to the library" and do a manual scan and wait for MM to ask to update iTunes playlists again.

P.S: If you ever hit the button "don't show this again" for playlist updater, it will never appear again, even after you remove and reinstall mediamonkey program from "add/remove programs".
You need to download revo-uninstaller pro to remove all the hidden files of MM and re-install MM again to restore all the display help/hints.

I hope music lovers will find this method useful.

Good luck
Pramod

 

[Runs Kwh]

Thank you for the very clear instructions. Exactly what is needed!!!! And the images!

 

[pramod1969]

You are welcome. I also love the sound quality (tight bass and less distortion) from USB drive compared to BT streaming.

With USB drive the song playing when you exit the car resumes automatically when you enter again. My experience with BT streaming was frustrating with on/off signal drop and the need to select BT audio each time you restart the phone.

P

 

[selsrog]

Hi Guys,

So if I understand correctly, the metadata of the music files is only used in the "what am I going to play" interface?
Not in the "Now playing" interface.

How strange is that?

Look at these two screenshots. Artists, Genres, Albums are nicely recognized and album art is fetched (in the Albums folder), but the song playing only show the name of the track, nothing else (and often wrongly, simply based on the filename)...
And this should be expected behavior? Weird.

Where are you version 6?

 

[iffatall]

... It was tedious, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that when I accessed the drive on the Model S, it listed the albums, each with a pic of the album cover and showed that cover when I played any song. Don't know if the pics got copied with the songs or the MS went out on the net and found them. I'm guessing it was the former.

Does anyone have any confirmation about whether the latest firmware fetches album art from the file or if it still gets them from the web? If anyone can confirm, I will go about renaming all my music files so the car disregards the cached metadata and picks the art from the newly named files now.

... What I *did* find out, however, is that the car caches the metadata based on the song's raw filename. For example, if you change the metadata but leave the filename the same, you will see the old metadata cached by the car. (Customer support can reset this cache, but you lose a lot of other stuff in the process) ...

Could you please elaborate on this? I tried to request customer service to do this. First, I am not even sure if they really understood what I was asking for. I tried my best, and in conclusion, they asked me to bring the car to the service center. I did not argue because I was planning to go anyway for the tank mode activation. When I went in a couple of weeks later, I asked the rep if they could clear the music cache. He also had a hard time understanding the issue, took a lot of notes as I was explaining. I left my car hoping it will be done, but at the end of the day, when I went back to pick the car, the cache was still there.

 

[tliving]

Personally, without shuffle options and with an alphabetical sort of the songs I find the USB player in the model S totally useless. It seems to have been designed and created by people who never used it beyond basic testing. I wrote a lot more about it here:
Playing music from USB in the Model S | Tesla Living

Would REALLY be nice if they added shuffle and upgraded the folders section.