How do you organize your USB drive for music?

I am still trying to nail down the best way to organize all of my music and have a few questions that people may have already figured out.

Does anyone know if having different levels of folders determine the artist/song? For example if I had a folder named Queen and inside I had the list of songs, does the entune system automatically give that folder the order of "Artist?" And if that is the case does having a sub folder within queen give that folder the "Album?"

Hope that makes sense! I have not had the greatest luck with my music being organized, songs are all over the place, or its like the folder does not matter sometimes but does the others.

Thanks.

 

Hi. I've got a '15 with (I assume) factory stereo, so presumably Entune system, and I haven't tried very hard, but it seems like it doesn't matter how I organize them on the thumb drive, they are all on a single "folder level" when they get to the head unit, organized by name/artist/etc. ABC/DEF/GHI...and so on. With mine, I have the thumb drive split into separate letters per folder. A by itself, B by itself, C by itself...etc., and it still comes up ABC/DEF/GHI/JKL on the truck.

Oh by the way, if your songs aren't tagged, they wont show up at all on the head unit (learned that thru a lot of cussing and looking and......"ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...tags **headslap**..ok"

 

The folder name is only a name that lets you know which folder it is. I has no effect on the music in that folder. You can have the same music in different folders if you want. I have a USB drive with 8 folders all containing music. Some songs are in multiple folders. One folder is labelled Favorites, another with DW's name and another labelled Rock.

Get a free program like mp3Tag to put them on any music that does not have them. Time consuming but it pays off in the long run.

 

I got an entune radio and use itunes to properly tag songs, even pictures come out ok. I noticed that if you have the base radio then the file name is what shows up on it. I have all my albums in root of thumb drive and made sure to inclyde the genre when tagging them. This way I can play by artist, album, genre. For specific playlists I just burned regular cds with the collection I want. Works pretty good.

 

I wish mine would do that......OR.....I wish I knew how to get mine to do that .

I've learned not to say "mine don't have that" in the last year or so since I bought it...I've found things (that I can't think of right now) that I would have sworn weren't available on my truck, but come to find out...they are.

 

Interesting. I have all my artists in their own folders but then I still have them labeled with the "artist" - "song" from my old car. I think deleting the artist portion will be better going forward. Right now the songs are not really sticking to the folders I have them in, very frustrating.

 

Genre
I add artists alphabetically
albums within artists

 

Do yourself a favor. Pick up an older ipod video, use itunes to make your playlists / organize music and just leave that plugged into the usb port, it will work SO much better than a straight USB stick.

 

You dont even need the ipod. Just do the itunes part and download contents into a thumbdrive. The thumbdrive will behave just like the ipod.

 

You could do that. But im not sure how the headunit interprets the folder structure on a plain jane flash drive. Using an ipod it actually integrates with the API on the ipod and displays playlists / artists / song / folder structure exactly how it is on the ipod.

 

Well from my own experience.. I have all of my music on itunes. When I export it to a thumbdrive they all go to the root directory of thumbdrive but since they have itunes tags my radio is able to group them properly by artist, specific album, even genre... So all files are flat but the tagging is the one that groups them together. I have to say... I have never done a playlist.. So ill have to see how that works.

 

I got a simple mp3 player from ebay for $27, much less than iPods. I used Windows Explorer to load the tunes. It works well.

 

I am going to try a program that will tag all the Mp3's properly and see if it then works as it should. Will post later.

 

Format your USB drive, Then make new folder with the label you want. Then copy music to the folders you want it in. I have all mine in .mp3 format. When you select audio there should be a section there that says Folders. Select that then select the folder you want then the particular song. It will then play in order from that song or select Random to play in a random order.

I do all this under Windows Explorer on my PC.

 

I have an old iPod that just stays in the truck. When I download a new song on to my iPad inside the house,the next time I start the truck,it downloads to the iPod after a short wait.

 

Try this https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

 

+1 to that. I used that for all my songs (after the cussing described above lol) and it works great. Lot of options on how to tag them. (title-artist ... artist-title...etc)

 

I use a mini cruiser thumbdrive and just put a folder for each artist if there’s multiple records by them. Entune can play albums by just a verbal request of the artist’s name. I havent tried using artist and album name yet, that would be cool. Will try today and update....

 

I have a 2017 with the entune audio plus. It does not recognize playlists on a usb drive. (that is how it is designed) I changed the genre tags of the songs on my different playlists to match the name of each playlist. Now when I insert the usb the entune recognizes the different genres that I created. The problem now is that it will not play the complete group on that genre, it wants me to select a single song and will only play the one song! Help!
Also: I use this same usb in my cheapo camry and it sees my playlists just fine! (JBL)

 

I went back and changed the name of the album of each song in my playlists to match the name of that playlist and it worked. Now I can enjoy my playlists! What a PITA!