I have tried and failed to get music to work well from a USB stick in my Octavia mk4 pre-FL since I bought it in February. I can play music, but without fail the system will just play the first song selected and then misbehave. Sometimes it is just quiet forever. Sometimes it waits for three to five minutes and then plays a random other song from the collection (I do not have shuffle on). Sometimes I can move to the next song using the "next" button on the steering wheel or on the screen, but most of the time it doesn't work.

I have tried formatting the stick as FAT, exFAT and NTFS.
I have followed the advice elsewhere in the forum to put all music in a folder called "Audio" in the root of the stick.

I have tried mp3, FLAC and AAC.

I have tried starting the navigation to the songs from the "Partition 2" or from "Music".

I have tried rebooting the Infotainment system (Columbus).

Does anyone have anything else to suggest?

Just a thought, have you tried using voice control?

I have my music in a USB drive in folders by artist then album; and then ask Laura something like “play artist name”. Works fine for me.

7 minutes ago, SteveTheElder said:

Just a thought, have you tried using voice control?

I have my music in a USB drive in folders by artist then album; and then ask Laura something like “play artist name”. Works fine for me.

I'll try that tomorrow, thanks. I also have that structure:
Audio / <Artist> / <Album> / files

What version Infosys software are you on? If below 1941 you might want to look at getting it upgraded.

Exfat formatted with folders below should work

Audio / <Artist> / <Album> / files

Only other suggestion is to try a different usb stick as some don't work well. Are you using a usb-c stick or older version with an adaptor. Plus size can cause issues, works better with 64gig or under from previous stuff I've read

7 hours ago, Novascape said:

What version Infosys software are you on? If below 1941 you might want to look at getting it upgraded.

Exfat formatted with folders below should work

Audio / <Artist> / <Album> / files

Only other suggestion is to try a different usb stick as some don't work well. Are you using a usb-c stick or older version with an adaptor. Plus size can cause issues, works better with 64gig or under from previous stuff I've read

I am on 1985. I am using a Sandisk Ultra Dual USB-C stick, 128 MB. I suppose I could purchase a smaller one and see if that makes a difference. As regards exFAT, I have read many posts on the forum and some swear by FAT32, some recommend exFAT and some claim only NTFS will work well... 🤷‍♂️

36 minutes ago, beneix said:

I suppose I could purchase a smaller one and see if that makes a difference.

I use a similar stick for 128GB as well, formatted for exFAT. No problem playing. So I guess don't waste money on another stick yet.
I navigate in music player to the stick as a source and then select folder and a file in it to start playing. Though I'm on 1941, and what you describe is another reason I'm not in a rush to upgrade my infotainment further.

Since I have continued to experiment with this over the summer and still have not managed to get music to play properly, I will recap:

Music plays from the USB stick, but not in a usable way:

• Every time I select Media, playback starts from a specific ABBA album rather than the last played one.

• Playback does not follow album order, instead it jumps randomly and only plays between 2 and 5 tracks from each album, then jumps to another album.

• Sometimes it stops mid-track.

• Sometimes after stopping mid-track, it will start a completely different track 5-10 minutes later if you leave it alone.

• Pressing "next track" sometimes works as it should, sometimes it works but only after a 1-2 minute pause with silence, sometimes it doesn't work at all and sometimes it jumps to a random track.

• Selecting a new album or track from the screen during play sometimes works, most of the time it does nothing, sometimes it works if you wait a couple of minutes (during which time the currently playing track continues).

What I have tried:

• Three different USB sticks of 32, 64 and 128 GB size (all Sandisk USB-C, no adapter)

• FAT32, exFAT and NTFS file systems

• MP3, AAC and FLAC

• Tried both center console USB slots.

• Start playing either by selecting Artist or Album, or by selecting the partition in the menu.

• Music placed in a root folder called "Music"

• All tracks have had metadata cleaned with MP3Tag, ensuring that both Album, Artist, Album Artist, Track, Track number etc. are all complete and correct.

• All files have been given file names starting with two-digit track numbers, e.g. "03. Dear Doctor.flac".

• I have reset the infotainment system.

Since nothing has worked, I have booked the car in with the garage late September and will update here (I can't say I have much hope). 😢

If anyone has any other suggestions to try, please let me know.

Edited 29 August, 202529 Aug by beneix

Must be an issue with lots of new cars. I own an Octavia mk4, but my old man recently got a new Renault Captur, and he suffers the same issue as this, has tried everything. Commenting as I want to come back to this thread at some point to see if you figure anything out that will maybe help him 😄 I use spotify myself through AA

Well, what do you know? I bought yet another USB stick, this time a 64GB SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go, and transferred all the files to that. Touch wood 🤞, it seems to have fixed the issues. It's been a week now and I'll give it some more testing over the weekend, but so far so good.

The weird thing is, I had already tried the exact same files on a 64GB SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe, a 128GB SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe, a Transcend 32 GB USB-C/USB-A and a 64 GB Transcend USB-C/USB-A stick, all formatted FAT32 like this one. All of them had the problems I described above. I fail to understand why those would have been problems and this one would work.

I'll post back in a week or two to confirm. Wish me luck! 😊

Usb I was using was a SanDisk too and worked without issues. Mine was a 256gb on. Was just a bit slow on initial loading on car start.

Lots of posts around different manufacturers usb sticks working/not working. Could be to do with the different types of host controllers And how they read/write to the NAND storage.

Skoda software must struggle with some types