Music on USB stick

[Aitch1]

Has anyone any information on using the USB music system? I use it more often than the radio and can carry out most functions except for how to play recordings consecutively. The on-screen symbol, (looks a bit like the Eternity symbol), only allows Repeat or Random. I would like to select an album, then play all the recordings in that album. Any advice would be welcome.

 

[mgpooter]

Me too!

 

[Philekent]

Has anyone any information on using the USB music system? I use it more often than the radio and can carry out most functions except for how to play recordings consecutively. The on-screen symbol, (looks a bit like the Eternity symbol), only allows Repeat or Random. I would like to select an album, then play all the recordings in that album. Any advice would be welcome.

I've used a USB stick happily - if you put the music into FOLDERS on the stick, then you can select a particular folder, and then play whatever's in that folder in sequence or randomly.. BUT the system defaults to playing music from ALL the folders on each power-up :-(

 

[Coulomb]

My MG4 ER has the same "feature". The MG4 has been out for years, so they must somehow think that this is what people want ?

I have my music with file names like "03 Imagine.mp3" for songs where I care about the order that they are played, which is most of them, and have the MP3 title clean (without the two digits and a space wasting precious screen real estate). That works well for my MG ZS EV. But the MG4 software sorts by MP3 title if available, and only file name if there is no title. So now i have to erase the MP3 titles for most of the songs to get them to play in the correct order. Fortunately, Mp3Tag makes this a bit easier (it can erase all selected songs in one go), but it's still a lot of work.

The other issue is that while it remembers the last song played, it doesn't remember the position, and plays that song from the start. So if you are doing a lot of short trips and the remembered song happens to be a long one, you get it multiple times.

Worse, when that song finishes, it goes to the next song alphabetically in the whole USB, because it doesn't remember that I want to play by folder.

Final whinge: at the end of the folder, it doesn't go to the next folder, it repeats the first song in the current folder. So I have to manually go to the next folder myself. I like to play the whole USB sequentially. My ZS EV did all that perfectly, albeit with 3x the lag and 3x more frequent crashes. And a pause button in the middle of the album art that is about 30% of the width of the art. And it's round, cutting off the corners.

Really MG, is it that hard to get a music player to function sensibly? I suppose that all the cool kids use streaming audio services now, so maybe they figure that a functional USB player isn't important these days?

As a point of interest, does the MG3 Hybrid+ infotainment have the same behaviour?

 

[Italy]

Even if it's not a perfect solution to your problem, have you tried MUSICOLET on AA and CP, which is much more flexible and effective?

Musicolet Music Player - Apps on Google Play

Multiple Queues • Separate Equalizers • Create synchronized lyrics • And more…

play.google.com

 

[mgpooter]

So this 'Musicolet' can be controlled on the UK MG3 H+'s screen?

 

[Italy]

So this 'Musicolet' can be controlled on the UK MG3 H+'s screen?

Yes from AA or CP

 

[Billy321]

Even if it's not a perfect solution to your problem, have you tried MUSICOLET on AA and CP, which is much more flexible and effective?

Musicolet Music Player - Apps on Google Play

Multiple Queues • Separate Equalizers • Create synchronized lyrics • And more…

play.google.com

Doesn’t seem to be available on Apple App Store? for download … so maybe only Android auto

 

[Italy]

Sorry only Android auto

 

[Coulomb]

Even if it's not a perfect solution to your problem, have you tried MUSICOLET on AA and CP, which is much more flexible and effective?

Thanks for the pointer. I've given it a try, and I can create a giant playlist with over 1100 songs, and they seem to play in the right order, at least for the most part. I can pick a spot in the giant playlist, and play from there, and it goes on to the correct next song. This is important because I have two cars that I drive, and I want to play from very roughly half the playlist difference between them. One car will get more time than the other, so one will eventually catch up with the other, but I live with that already.

This may be about the best I can get. With a wireless Android Auto adapter, the pain should be minimal (not having to connect and disconnect the phone all the time).

Thanks again!

Then the only thing (!) making my life incomplete is that I can't see the album art at decent size (say 400x400 pixels) in full colour and contrast. I can have a postage stamp in one Android Auto view, or a full height image in another view, but with the contrast reduced, presumably because that's the only way they could think of to guarantee that you can see the controls (play/pause, track next/previous, and the progress bar).

Sorry only Android auto

Ok, but there seem to be hundreds of music play apps, presumably some of them in the Apple Store will have what you need, @Billy321 . The problem is figuring out which ones are the good ones, with minimal or no adds, minimal bloat, and all the basic features.

 

[Italy]

Glad to have helped.

Since you like music, I can also offer you RI music with Android auto:

„RiMusic“ – IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

A multilingual Android application for streaming music from YouTube Music.

apt.izzysoft.de

Or

RiMusic APK Free Download - OpenAPK

Free download of RiMusic APK file and source code repo under Apache-2.0 license - Latest Version 0.6.72 - Stream music from YouTube Music

www.openapk.net

Free and no ads

Ok, but there seem to be hundreds of music play apps, presumably some of them in the Apple Store will have what you need, @Billy321 . The problem is figuring out which ones are the good ones, with minimal or no adds, minimal bloat, and all the basic features.

Yes and.....free which is not at all Apple's strong point. ???

 

[Billy321]

Ok, but there seem to be hundreds of music play apps, presumably some of them in the Apple Store will have what you need, @Billy321 . The problem is figuring out which ones are the good ones, with minimal or no adds, minimal bloat, and all the basic features.

Something for me to investigate from tomorrow after I collect my MG3Hybrid+ trophy.

 

[dsr]

Unsure if I have just been temporarily lucky but, post-R59, when I head for USB I seem to be in the folder and at the last track I played, rather than being thrown back to an alphabetic list of songs. If this holds true, for me it will be a BIG plus. Have others found the same?