MP3 USB Flash drive

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apdragon

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I have been searching on the forum about mp3s not being played on a usb flash drive. I tried to use another flash drive to maybe reset it or something but it didn't work. The mp3s that won't play on the flash drive, play just fine on a CD. Can anyone give me any other ideas to try? Thanks in Advance.

I have a kingston 4GB Traveler and a Patriot 8GB mini
 
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Try different mp3, and if doesn't work at all I would try involve dealer and warranty. I got Sony 16Gb USB stick and mp3 are working just fine.
 
apdragon said:
I have been searching on the forum about mp3s not being played on a usb flash drive. I tried to use another flash drive to maybe reset it or something but it didn't work. The mp3s that won't play on the flash drive, play just fine on a CD. Can anyone give me any other ideas to try? Thanks in Advance.

I have a kingston 4GB Traveler and a Patriot 8GB mini
Click to expand...


Are these MP3's ripped from CD or purchased? Some music is encrypted (ie.. "DRM" protected). I don't know that DRM protected MP3s can play thru the USB. All of mine are not protected, but I'm thinking that may be the reason your having trouble.
 
I tried to re-encode the mp3s and it still didn't work on the same songs. I don't think it would be the naming of the songs? These are mp3s I downloaded for free ;)
 
In my opinion if the songs can be played from the USB stick on a computer they should work in 4Runner as well. Make sure though that you don't have any non-english characters (some specific German or French letters) in song names and song name + folder name does not exceed 256 characters. You can name a few songs as 1.mp3, 2.mp3, etc and try to play them again. Another thing to check is if the vehicle recognizes your USB stick at all. I think when you connect USB stick a new icon should appear on the display , in the right bottom corner. I think you might need to press AUX button a few times until USB shows on display and then it should start play songs automatically.
 
I've had this problem too. just random songs/albums won't play. I put the same files on my iPhone and they play fine. tried different flash drives too; files still didn't play. The head unit will stop on the track, then just skip it. i've looked at the details of the files and can't understand why one plays and another doesn't.
 
Same issues here. Most of the thousands of songs I have on my HDD play fine, but there are a handful of songs that just won't play, despite playing fine on my ipod and computer. As Jesse described, the headunit recognizes a song is there (as indicated by the song number on the display) but it just sits and "thinks" for a moment and then skips on to the next song. Does not seem to be isolated to any one folder, album, or artist, etc.
 
I use a 16 GB patriot thumb drive. I have had no problems playing the folders in the drive, and have not noticed any dropped out songs. Having said that the MP3's are older music and the cd's I ripped may not have had DRM on them. The one point I would make is that the music tends to take a long time to load and list. I also find it hard at times to navigate the drive using the stereo. Its not that intuitive, but works. The one bug that I find annoying is if one of my children want to plug in there drive while driving the drive will not show up. I believe Toyota has this as a safety feature. They do not want you to drive and try to fiddle with USB drives. As a driver you would have to lean too far over to insert the USB drive(almost impossible to do). But as a passenger I do not see the harm. IS there a fix for this? Other than putting everyones music on the one drive?
 
Jesse1983 said:
I've had this problem too. just random songs/albums won't play. I put the same files on my iPhone and they play fine. tried different flash drives too; files still didn't play. The head unit will stop on the track, then just skip it. i've looked at the details of the files and can't understand why one plays and another doesn't.
Click to expand...

Same here Jesse. I can't get Eminem's latest album to play from the USB drive at all. Works fine on my iPhone. I just end up using the bluetooth for the songs that won't play thru USB - even have a playlist of them on my phone. I'm still trying to figure it out myself.
 
^ Yup, i've had entire albums the head unit just won't play. sometimes I'll just go download a different one and it plays fine. very strange and there seems to be nothing to differentiate the files that play from the files that don't.
 
Fix found

For those who have this problem with playing some downloaded MP3 music. I actually found the solution on the Tundra site (sorry don't have the link)

You will need an MP3 editor. I downloaded MP3tag (it's free) and all you need to do is use it to remove the album cover picture. I did this to all the downloaded MP3 music that didn't play and now they work with no problems.

I'm guessing this must be a software bug but I'm not sure if this is the same for the 2011 - 2013.
 
My fix for this issue

After trying different things for 4 hours I finally got all my mp3s to show and play. I originally had all songs in the root folder and the system can't handle that. So I made folders A-Z and moved the files out of the root into the folders. Problem solved! I still have album covers too!
 
quaser182 said:
After trying different things for 4 hours I finally got all my mp3s to show and play. I originally had all songs in the root folder and the system can't handle that. So I made folders A-Z and moved the files out of the root into the folders. Problem solved! I still have album covers too!
Click to expand...

you can only have so many files in the root folder, its a limitation of fat (file allocation table). if you make just 1 folder (music) and dump all the files in there, you get around the issue.
 
Time to revive this old thread folks, because I'm having USB drive problems I cannot figure out.

I put 8 (eight) mp3's on the root of 3 (three) different USB drives. They're all formatted in FAT32. One of them works like a charm, as soon as I plug it in, I can play any of the 8 songs. The other two thumb drives do not work. They do not get displayed as source option when plugged in, although their power LED does turn on when plugged in.

All three drives work fine in my computers (tried them on 2 different computers, no problems). The same 8 files were used on all 3 drives.

The reason I need to get this working is I want a small drive in there, not a big bulky one, and the one that works is the bulkiest (and ugliest) I've got.
 
[APOP] said:
Time to revive this old thread folks, because I'm having USB drive problems I cannot figure out.

I put 8 (eight) mp3's on the root of 3 (three) different USB drives...
Click to expand...

I've got my issues with Entune and USB drives, but getting the files to play hasn't been one of them.

There could be any of a number of variables that are causing your issue, so I'd just stick with the drive you favor most and try to get that to work. First make sure you're not plugging and unplugging the drive while the ignition is on. Computers don't like that, and Entune is just another dumb computer. Plug it in, and if it's not recognized when you turn on the ignition, give it a wiggle to see if that helps. The problem could be dirty contacts. You might try some contact cleaner, possibly on the car side, since it works on your computers. Good luck.
 
I am not sure if this is your problem but it has helped others to play from a usb stick with the Entune.

I found on another forum that the way you have your songs setup may have an effect in the Entune reading the files.

The file structure I have is like this:
Artist
Album
Songs

In most head units (after market) you can't create a file structure like:
Genre
Artist
Album
Songs

Because it can only read so many levels.
I wonder if this could be the problem.
 
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