Hi just wondered what the requirements are to get the media player to work with a thumb drive reliably?

Any file system , folder structure, memory size, max number of albums etc that it needs to make it reliable.

I CAN get it to work, setup 20 or so favourite albums, the artwork loads, they play fine, voice control works too.

But next time I get in the car it’s a lottery whether anything works, in fact I’d go as far as to say 80% of the time they don’t load.

Often it will fail to load the favourites, but decide to play something by itself and not even always the same thing!

I’ve tried a couple of different sticks including one with very fast read times but no joy. Such a shame as I love to use my own music.

In various cars, I eventually settled on a way that seems to work in all.

From nothing on the drive at all.

Created a folder Say "My Music" Then nothing outside that folder. Place one single track in the folder, Then drop Folders of whatever Genre, artist or album into the folder.

When looked at on pc from the Root you then see "My music" when clicked on you see the single track then all the other folders.

Every car i have had it in plays it. To randomly shuffle everything you select the single track outside the inner folders and press shuffle. it then dips in and out of everything. or you can search by artist or whatever the system allows

I play all mine from my attached phone. Just works. Always starts where it left off. Haven't used a thumb drive for many years.

This is the only way I've made it work reliably on many VAG group cars over the years.

Start with a clean thumb drive, format it if you need to.

DO NOT create any folders on the drive.

Copy each album in turn onto the drive so that each album shows up as it's own folder.

All album folders need to be in the root of the drive. DO NOT nest folders one inside the other.

If you want album art there are two possible ways:

Inside each album folder place a small JPEG of the album art. (It must be exactly the right size, but I forget what that is. Too big or too small and it does not work).

Use an MP3 tag editor to embed the album art as a metatag on each track of the album.

Using the above method I have media available on both a Mk8 Golf and the Kamiq, most of it showing album art. The Thumb drive must be plugged into one of the front USB C ports under the heater controls.

Edited 19 February19 Feb by Aldfort