MG ZS EV USB Music Folders

[Nickel]

Have you tried the back of the sock drawer, behind the old 8-track cassettes?

 

[Roldorf]

Still no solution to all in one list of music files? Just tried mine out for the first time today and all on big list of music and no directory structure.

 

[Chrisjk]

Sounds as if my problem with Gen2 infotainment is common. I loaded my usb drive with complete albums but no albums appear in the music section, just a massive list of individual tracks all muddled up! I presume no one has found a way around this

 

[Pauli363]

It's a design flaw.

 

[patience]

I can't say it is a feature I will ever use given that the vehicle has Android Auto and Apple Carplay

I use it because I with that I just switch on the car and it carries on playing from where I left off. I have a stick with a lot of tracks (that I like) on it, so it saves me setting anything up which I would have to do, even if it's voice activated, with my iPhone

 

[Gadget Geek]

I use it because I with that I just switch on the car and it carries on playing from where I left off. I have a stick with a lot of tracks (that I like) on it, so it saves me setting anything up which I would have to do, even if it's voice activated, with my iPhone

VLC in Android Auto plays automatically from where you last left it.

 

[Rolfe]

The MG4 SE is the same, but the Trophy supports folders. There is nothing in the manual to suggest this is intentional and I'm certain it's a bug/oversight. I think the more people complain about it the more chance of getting it fixed in a software upgrade.

 

[nanamoo2008]

OK, so the workaround seems to be functioning. Something similar was suggested early on in the thread.

Here's what I've done:

• At first, I thought tracks were being displayed in alphabetical order of filename, but they aren't. They are being displayed in alphabetical order of the Title field in the ID3 metadata
• So, the first step was to use MP3tag software to modify that field to include Artist, Album and Track No.
• You need to be brief, or you won't be able to read key data for a later step. The player only displays the first 14 characters of the field and doesn't scroll any more.
• I changed the Title field of each track to: "Artist/Album/Track No/Track title" Suppose I'm loading Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water from the album of the same name. (Yes, I am that old... ) I change the Title field to (e.g) "S&G/Bridge/01 Bridge over Troubled Water."
• Now when the sort is done, the player will group all Simon & Garfunkel (S&G) tracks together, then group all tracks on the Bridge album together, sorting them into track number order. (You need the track number to have the leading zero as this is a pure alpha sort, so would otherwise order as 1,10,11,2, 20,3,4 etc.
• Placing your USB in the car, you now have a potentially huge list, ordered into Artist, Album and the correct track order. Still exceedingly difficult to use.
• The final step is to scroll through the list of tracks and mark every "01" track as a favourite. Now tap the little button that puts the track listing into Favourite mode.
• Presto, you now have a list of all albums on your USB stick, grouped by Artist. Tap your choice, and the album will start playing at track 01. If you want to change track, put the list back into Title mode, and the other tracks on the album will be close at hand.

Is this ideal? Of course not - there should be a proper sort and selection facility in the player. But I gather that MG are far from the only marque with players that behave like this.

Is it a faff to do? Up to a point. It's work for the customer that should be unnecessary.

Does it take a long time? No. Using MP3Tag's batch editing ability, the Convert Tag->tag function and a suitably crafted format string to utilise what info your files carry, it's quick enough. Once I'd sorted what I was doing, I could edit an entire album in less than a minute.

So, if anyone's interested, that's what I did. I'm happy that I now have a selection of my favourite albums in the car, and I can choose what I want. I'll top the stick up as I feel te need.

If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best...

You are a genius!! This has been driving me crazy since i got my ZS in Nov lol I had to register to say thanks to you!

 

[VinceNg]

Don’t know if this is affecting anyone. My zs ev displays the folders correctly. But when playing songs. It will only play the music in the folder. Repeating the whole list again after the last song is played. It will not skip to the next folder. Is this normal?

 

[fred12345]

Don’t know if this is affecting anyone. My zs ev displays the folders correctly. But when playing songs. It will only play the music in the folder. Repeating the whole list again after the last song is played. It will not skip to the next folder. Is this normal?

that's what my previous car used to do, I had to navigate to a specific folder and then it would just play whatever is there..

I checked the same USB stick in my ZS Mk2 and it shows all the songs listed in alphabetical order, from all folders. I can't even see an option to show folders ... the only options I could see is sort it as "all songs" or "favourites" and random play ...

 

[Coulomb]

But when playing songs. It will only play the music in the folder.... It will not skip to the next folder. Is this normal?

That's not how my Mark 1 works. I have artist / album hierarchy, and it plays all songs in all folders, starting at the first folder after the last song in the last folder has played.

Maybe you have repeat set on? I think it's the button to the left of the one highlighted below:

 

[fred12345]

That's not how my Mark 1 works.

Ignore track names, this is mixed folders USB stick with some baby songs from when kids had to be entertained (or so I thought )....went back for photos, this how it is on mine... I'm not bothered either way since I use my phone and Spotify for music...
so, they are all bundled together by song name (note: some downloaded randomly from the internet ages ago and some CD copy) and whatever I press, random play or not, they are still displayed like this.