USB flash drive playlist on 2017 Entune Premium Audio, help needed

R

RockHammer

New member
I've been trying to get playlists on a USB drive working on my 8 week old 2017 TRD Off Road Premium since I got it. :frusty: The music plays fine and I can browse Artists, Genre, Albums, etc. just fine. But it will not recognize playlists on the many drives, and file types, I've tried. I have contacted Toyota Customer Care, and taken it to a dealer, and both are clueless on the format needed, except to quote the manual on "dont't use m3u files", which some have had success with.

The problem is that Toyota has not provided any definition for playlist format on USB devices, except to say "m3u playlists are not compatible with the audio player." To me, that's like specifying under fuel requirements, "don't use compressed natural gas" and expecting us to figure out that diesel won't work either, but gasoline will.

I've seen many requests, and recommendations, here and elsewhere on the Internet, on how to resolve the issue. All the people that have had success have done so in older vehicles, and none have specified the level of Entune system they have had success with. I suspect the issue may have something to do with the software version on the 2017 Entune Premium Audio.

So, I'm asking anyone with a 2017 Toyota with "Entune Premium Audio", if:
a) they've had success with creating a playlist file (a file that specifies a subset of the music on the drive)
and if so,
b) what is the file type you got to work
c) post the first 5 lines and last 5 lines of the contents
d) Year, Model and Entune level of your vehicle

If I'm able to get this to work I'll post a detailed explanation so others don't have to go through this aggravation.

Thanks in advance,
 
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GearJunkie88 said:
Do any of these threads help:

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/65621-how-use-usb-hard-drive-music.html

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-gen-t4rs/197912-questions-about-music-through-usb-port.html

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/5th-g...-when-using-flash-drive-playing-thru-usb.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I saw the first and third posts, and there is nothing new to me in the second. It seems that older Entune units have been able to use playlists, and specifically the .m3u playlists the 2017 manual says won't work, but I haven't been able to duplicate their success with my new 4Runner.
 
flyrv9 said:
Did you try another USB and or another brand of USB? USB's can go bad or be incompatable.
Click to expand...

I have tried 3 different devices. All of them play the MP3s on them very nicely, and I can sort by album, artist, genre and more. It's not the devices. Toyota doesn't tell us what playlist format WILL work, and my 2017 Entune Premium Audio unit will not recognize .pls, .wpl or .xspf playlists that I've tried.
 
Ok I just wondered. On some of the aircraft I worked on USBs were used to load software or update periodic software like Nav databases that are only valid for 28 days. We had issues with some USB brands and also some went bad after several uses. You could load the software on them; but the load to the airplane failed. I thought that could be the issue here.
 
flyrv9 said:
Ok I just wondered. On some of the aircraft I worked on USBs were used to load software or update periodic software like Nav databases that are only valid for 28 days. We had issues with some USB brands and also some went bad after several uses. You could load the software on them; but the load to the airplane failed. I thought that could be the issue here.
Click to expand...

As indicated earlier, music plays fine on 3 different devices. I'm convinced it's not a hardware issue. I just need to know what format to use when creating playlists. Thanks for the reply.
 
I don't recall seeing anyone get a playlist to work.

I seem to recall people creating a playlist then placing all the media files for that playlist in its own folder.
 
theesotericone said:
What are you using to create the playlist? I'm thinking it's gotta be something related to the path that causes the playlist to not be recognized?
Click to expand...

"What are you using to create the playlist?" :rant: That's the question. The manual only says "m3u playlists are not compatible with the audio player", which are Winamp playlists. I've tried to modify those, which others have said works, as well as using MediaMonkey and Quintessential Media Player. Using file types of .pls, .m3u, and wpl, as well as .xml result in the same "No playlists are available" response from the unit. I've tried both forward and back slashes in the file paths. To paraphrase, "No bueno".
 
d_clark said:
I don't recall seeing anyone get a playlist to work.

I seem to recall people creating a playlist then placing all the media files for that playlist in its own folder.
Click to expand...

There are many instances where people claim to have gotten them to work, but they all seem to be on vehicles older than my 2017. And, one of the voice commands on the 2017 Entune Premium Audio systems, while a USB device is active, is "Browse Playlists".

Placing multiple files in a folder does not create a playlist. A playlist is a single file containing a links to a subset of the files on a drive that you'd like to listen to. What you describe there is a kluge to work around bad software, which is what I am trying desperately to avoid.
 
I had this problem when I first got my 4R last year, and contacted Toyota's tech support. They said that Entune can't do playlists off a USB drive. The only way to do playlists is have them on an iPod or phone, etc, and play it through Entune.
 
Ray Dunakin said:
I had this problem when I first got my 4R last year, and contacted Toyota's tech support. They said that Entune can't do playlists off a USB drive. The only way to do playlists is have them on an iPod or phone, etc, and play it through Entune.
Click to expand...



That sucks. I don't want to load all my music on my phone. If I'm forced I'll load it on an old iPod. Can the music be played through the mini SD?
 
When I did a google search for the exact same topic, I found more than a few Toyota forums discussing the exact same thing, with long, multi-page threads.

As you recently mentioned, entune doesn't do playlists in any way, shape or form. Which is really too bad, because it does a great job of taking a large gob of mp3s on a USB stick and organizing them within the entune app. Some courageous folks even went so far to change the tag data on files to get them to coelesce on the device as a single album, so a playlist would appear as an album. I've got over 40gb of music on a 64gb stick, so no way I'm wasting my time on that.
It's good that entune organizes this stuff itself, but it's bad because modern entune ignores the folders or any type of structure you put on the USB stick. It used to be more basic, and you could browse folders on the stick. This would make playlists a non-issue....


Anyway- I learned to live with it. I collect records, so I usually listen to an album in it's entirety as a habit. I'm happy to say, I can find an album in seconds with the buttons on the steering wheel.

The other suggested alternative is to load your phone up with music and take advantage of the playlist option of your phone through Bluetooth. I'm not a phone guy, so that doesn't work for me either.


Tl;dr. : not recognizing playlist formats of ANY type is a drawback of entune at a toyota level. It's well documented on many Toyota forums
 
Last edited:
Ray Dunakin said:
I had this problem when I first got my 4R last year, and contacted Toyota's tech support. They said that Entune can't do playlists off a USB drive. The only way to do playlists is have them on an iPod or phone, etc, and play it through Entune.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, Ray. I've contacted Toyota customer care and am trying to get the issue escalated. I've also been to a dealer, and they're baffled. They say the Playlist menu item should be displayed along with the Artist, Album, Composer, etc. at the top of the display.

When I first got through to the Entune group at Toyota, they also said that playlists don't work through USB. Yet they couldn't explain why Entune gives me a voice command option of "Browse Playlists" while I'm listening to music on a USB flash drive, or why they don't say that specifically in the manual, while saying .m3u playlists aren't compatible. It all smacks of unfinished software.

Oddly, if one digs deep enough into this, they'll find that the Entune system is based on the QNX operating system. Documentation for the QNX software development kit indicates there are plugins for .pls, .m3u, .wpl, xspf and other playlist formats. Given other owners, with older 4Runners, have reported that they have been able to use playlists on USB drives, I suspect that somewhere along the line a bug was introduced, dropping that functionality for those of us with newer vehicles. From my perspective Toyota just has to fix this and/or document which playlist formats they DO support.
 
RBE17 said:
That sucks. I don't want to load all my music on my phone. If I'm forced I'll load it on an old iPod. Can the music be played through the mini SD?
Click to expand...

My phone is on Virgin Mobile, which Entunes doesn't support, so Bluetooth is out form me. If by 'mini SD', you mean the Micro SD card slot in the newer 4Runners, that's for navigation only.
 
nb rob said:
When I did a google search for the exact same topic, I found more than a few Toyota forums discussing the exact same thing, with long, multi-page threads.

As you recently mentioned, entune doesn't do playlists in any way, shape or form. Which is really too bad, because it does a great job of taking a large gob of mp3s on a USB stick and organizing them within the entune app. Some courageous folks even went so far to change the tag data on files to get them to coelesce on the device as a single album, so a playlist would appear as an album. I've got over 40gb of music on a 64gb stick, so no way I'm wasting my time on that.
It's good that entune organizes this stuff itself, but it's bad because modern entune ignores the folders or any type of structure you put on the USB stick. It used to be more basic, and you could browse folders on the stick. This would make playlists a non-issue....


Anyway- I learned to live with it. I collect records, so I usually listen to an album in it's entirety as a habit. I'm happy to say, I can find an album in seconds with the buttons on the steering wheel.

The other suggested alternative is to load your phone up with music and take advantage of the playlist option of your phone through Bluetooth. I'm not a phone guy, so that doesn't work for me either.


Tl;dr. : not recognizing playlist formats of ANY type is a drawback of entune at a toyota level. It's well documented on many Toyota forums
Click to expand...

When I give it the voice command "Browse Playlists", its response is "No playlists are available." This implies it can deal with playlists, just not the ones I've got on the drive. So, all I need is for Toyota to tell me, and the rest of the world, which playlists their Entune system recognizes. :biggrin2:
 
RockHammer said:
My phone is on Virgin Mobile, which Entunes doesn't support, so Bluetooth is out form me. If by 'mini SD', you mean the Micro SD card slot in the newer 4Runners, that's for navigation only.
Click to expand...

Yes, the Micro SD is what I meant by "mini SD". Thank you for the clarification and information.

I was very excited to have Bluetooth in this car as I was using an external bluetooth device for calls. An old school player in my tape drive that plugged into my phone's aux 3.5mm port was used for music and podcast listening.

Now, I'm a little frustrated at the lack of versatility and difficulty in attempting to utilize the technology. I've experienced connectivity issues while listening to podcasts thru podcruncher if another phone app is open. Then the entire head unit seems to freeze and then I can't listen independently to my phone because it is still "connected" to the head unit.

Anyway, my mini rant is over. I don't have the time to mess w/ attempting to troubleshoot this, but will gladly try some of the suggestions on this great board.

Thanks.
 
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