I"ve read a thread where someone loaded up a big USB drive. They had problems as the car was taking a long time to index and read through the drive. I do think it played the songs, but he found it seems that you can't use too big a drive with too many songs.

 

Convert them to mp3. I think iTunes can export into mp3 if chosen in the settings.

 

Is it Apple Music music or iTunes purchased songs? If Apple Music, it might not play.

 

Purchased I don’t have Apple Music.

 

Purchased I don't have Apple Music.

Well there goes my theory

 

I just downloaded Tesla tunes. I am going to try that later.

 

... I can use my phone no biggie but I thought it would be kind of cool to have all my iTunes music in my car. I wanted to test on an existing USB drive before I purchased a larger one that would be dedicated to the car.

For a while, I thought I was the last person on the planet who was wanting to use a USB to play songs instead of having to use my phone. I feel better now.

~Charlie

 

So I think there is something weird with Apple files that the Model 3 doesn't like. I converted a few to FLAC just to test and the car can play those but I have a problem with the car going to the next song on the drive after playing for roughly 30 seconds. So that isn't quite perfect yet but that could be because I had to go and pulled the drive and probably messed up the file transfer.

I tried TeslaTunes and it is pretty neat but it will not convert to FLAC unless it thinks the files are Apple lossless (which I guess they aren't but I think they are because the car won't play them) so it does a nice copy but won't auto convert and there is no way to force it. I opened an issue with the developer and he has reached out so maybe we can get this solved which would be awesome!

I plan on getting some more files converted to FLAC and will try it again today. I just wanted to keep everyone up to date because I haven't seen many Model 3 postings on getting the right format on a USB drive.

For reference I have a Macbook Pro 13" with Touchbar that I am using to try to do all of this. I could try on one of my work laptops but they have this software on there that sniffs all outgoing packets and it makes USB transfer super painfully slow.

 

Hey guys. The issue for some could be the format of the USB drive. It needs to be FAT32. I'm not on my computer at the moment, but if it's not an option for Macs find a PC to format the drive with. They mention the format in the manual of someone else wants to find it. Not sure what file types they support, but I heard that the model S supports FLAC amongst others.

 

Hey guys. The issue here is the format of the USB drive. It needs to be FAT32. I'm not on my computer at the moment, but if it's not an option for Macs find a PC to format the drive with. They mention the format in the manual of someone else wants to find it. Not sure what file types they support, but I heard that the model S supports FLAC amongst others.

Just as a confirmation the Mac can format FAT32.

 

From the latest manual:

 

if I recall though, there is a size max for FAT32 (at least from OSX), so a top thumb drive may be ok, but not a 2T SSD drive.

 

I already had it formatted FAT32 and then for good measure I wiped it and formatted it again. That didn't fix the issue. The car can read the USB just fine and see all the files on there. Plus it knows the song name/artist/title on the m4a files. When I choose a file to play it shows up on the screen with the info about the file including album art but it says "Loading Error" under the song name and will not play.

I have better results with FLAC but that still isn't perfect and I don't want to manually manage all the files myself. The utility I tried is very basic so I have to choose a directory at a time and it will copy to a root level on the thumb drive. So I am hoping to get a new TeslaTunes version that will do this for me. I could get his code and change it to do what I want but right now I don't have time and I haven't done Mac development before so there would be some learning curve.

 

What is Teslatunes?
Thanks,
Ed

 

It is a utility written by a fellow Tesla owner. It runs on Mac OS X and it syncs your iTunes library with a thumb drive. So if you buy new songs it identifies the new ones and copies only them over so you can keep a USB thumb drive in sync with your music without much work. In addition it is supposed to convert apple files you cannot play on the Tesla to FLAC format so the car can play them. It works fine keeping the files in sync for me but it isn't converting the files to FLAC so either it thinks the files are ones that are compatible with Tesla or they are compatible with Model S/X but not with 3.

If you have a Mac it is really a nice piece of software that helps manage a USB drive. Unfortunately at this moment it isn't working for me but I filed an issue against his project so he has reached out to me. I'll follow up to let others know what comes of it.

 

In my previous life with other cars that were supposed to play music from USB or CDs with mp3, there are several things to consider:

1. Double check that the files does NOT have DRM (copyright management stuff). iTunes uses this even if you purchased the song.
2. Try to use a very well known format and codec. Specially those DRM-free (mp3).
3. Double check the names of the folders and files: look for spaces, symbols, long names, etc.
4. Remove any non-music files: images, meta-data files, etc.
5. Try first with a small number of folders/files.

I remember having lots of pain with all these stuff. It was a blessing when I could use my iPhone over BT with Apple music locally cached in the phone. Much less drama.

Not sure what is the perfect recipe for the Model 3 USB itself, let us know if you find it

 

Thanks I am trying different things and will let everyone know what works. I have things though during the process. 1. It has to work. 2. I have to have some easy way to maintain the files on the USB drive. If I can't get both things to happen then I'll give up on it. That is why I went the TeslaTunes approach first because I like how it helps sync and convert at the same time. If I have to manually convert and keep everything sync it will not be worth it to me. I might be tempted to write software that can do it but why if someone already has something that does everything I want.

 

The issue is that they are .mpa. I had a brand new song that I just bought, downloaded and put on a USB drive and it didn't play. I got the title of the song and the album artwork but the song itself would give a loading error. The MP3's that I have played fine but the album artwork didn't carry over.

 

i'm using a 32 GB USB drive with MP3 files and everything works great including the album art. I have my music and video library on a 4T NAS (Western Digital My Cloud network attached storage) drive and it's used by my Mac, Windows PC, and my TV (via DLNA). The NAS is setup as a DLNA server. To get around the album art issue with DLNA I've created an album art image called folder.jpg in every album's folder.

 

i'm using a 32 GB USB drive with MP3 files and everything works great including the album art. I have my music library on a 4T NAS (network attached storage) drive and it's used by my Mac, Windows PC, and my TV (via DLNA). To get around the album art issue with DLNA I've created an album art image called folder.jpg in every album's folder.

What do you think your M3 is doing with the album art? Do you think it is pulling the album art from your thumb drive or from a grace notes or like database? Also how full is your 32 GB drive and did you ever have any indexing issues?

I downloaded Telsatunes and ran that yesterday. I've got about 45 GB of music. Purchased a 64 GB drive on Amazon today, hope it will hold it all and not have indexing issues.

 

It seems that there are problems reading m4a files even if you use TeslaTunes. I had the problem on my Model X. I could never get the system to play through all the songs without some sort of error.

Many have resorted to converting to mp3. I converted to FLAC and have had flawless playback on the X and the 3 ever since.

 

Have you tested the m4a files with the latest software.. most of my music is m4A. If I may ask what ap/prgm did you use to convert? Like many I am prepping like crazy. Thanks

 

Sorry, meant to add that MP3 is criminal to use with such a nice sound system

 

Although I have a 2013 Model S and not a Model 3, I suspect we're having the same issues.
TL;DR - The car doesn't like changing audio formats. You need to convert everything into one format (I chose 320K MP3). It also has weird sort logic that can be fixed with consistent Album and Artist tags.
......Long version......
I had all sorts of loading errors etc. over the past week. I have ~300 songs from a variety of artists and albums in both MP3 and M4A. I'm an IT guy with a music habit and a penchant for solving problems.
Suffice to say, this annoyed the **** out of me.
Here's what I did to fix it...
Tools:
MacBook Pro with macOS 10.13.4
MusicBrainz-Picard - this is to edit the metadata tags (album, genre, etc.) - necessary to overcome some weird sorting logic in the media player app
MediaHuman Audio Converter - converts everything to MP3 - this is KEY to avoid the loading errors
USB drive formatted as FAT32 (get a good one from Sandisk or Samsung or someone you've heard of)
Process:
Install both apps above.
Insert the USB stick
Launch MediaHuman Audio Converter and add the songs you want on the USB stick. I did one album at a time.
Set the format to MP3 320K
Let it convert all your files.
Click on the spyglass next to one to find the directory with the converted files (it's buried somewhere)
Once that window pops up, open Picard and drag all the new files into that app. Set the Artist and Album to the same thing on every track, even if they're different artist. This is the only way I could figure out how to fake out the sort logic in the car.
On the USB stick, create new folders per album and drag the files into the appropriate folder.
Unmount the stick from your Mac and remove.
Put it in your car, touch USB, wait until it loads, and start playing and changing songs. It shouldn't lag at all or cause issues.
The albums will be right; the artists may not be if the album is a compilation.
My hypothesis is that it there is a bug (or set of bugs) when changing file types. It'll read MP3, M4A, FLAC, and some others I think. I've seen the errors when I've switched from an MP3 album to an M4A album (for example). I haven't when you switch across the MP3 files.

 

Thanks for the information and details. I have to say that this looks like a lot of work. I spent several weeks a few years back ripping my CD's to iTunes - most all of those are MP3. The albums purchased since then are m4a. I don't think it's worth the time to get it all on a USB. Will just play from the phone over bluetooth. It's an interface I'm already familiar with. If I can play a few songs from the USB and notice a difference over BT it might be worth coming back and doing this work going through my library again, but not feeling it just yet. Hope to have a car in a few weeks to compare.

 

hopefully they put some work into the USB music player, once the other launch kinks get ironed out in the M3 software. I would much rather use USB than Bluetooth for music. Stuff like shuffle, auto-resume, general compatibility, ability to search via voice, etc. is still missing, if I'm reading correctly.

 

Everything that you've described potentially works via Bluetooth.

 

[mod note: posts from several different threads have been merged here, leading to some repetition]

hi All,
First time writing here, and i've got a puzzling question. Had my 3 for about 4 weeks now. in the last week have finally had time to figure out how i'm going to do music. Can use the phone and bluetooth, but also wanted to have a few USB drives so i could have lots of my music at my fingertips. i loaded about 65 gigs on to a drive. it took the 3 about 2 minutes or less to index it all, and i could play anything from it. So i thought all was good, here's the weird thing that has happened 3 times, and i've given up, but thought i'd ask here to see if someone has any suggestions, etc. after leaving the car, and coming back to it, the next morning. i go to put in in reverse, the R does not come up, the camera does not come on, but it does move in reverse, same with D, essentially the screen is locked up. i remove the usb drive, and have to reset the screen. Then everything works perfect, until the next time i put the USB in. I'm flummoxed that this could lock up and / or crash the 3's system. Any insight would be great. Really bummed this simple function seems like something i shouldn't do, for fear of screwing up the cars computer.
thanks.

 

I've had two gripes with USB playback of MP3 music: slow loading of the library every time I start the car, and no shuffle/repeat. However, while skimming the online manual I noticed page 96 says, "You can also shuffle tracks in a playlist or repeat a playlist or track using the shuffle/repeat icons displayed below the album cover art."

Does anyone see such icons? I don't.
I'm on SW version 2018.21.9

 

low loading of the library every time I start the car,

others have concluded that mixing various music file formats together will cause loading speed issues. You may want to try a USB drive with only one file type and see if that helps the indexing speed.

 

Nope.

High on my list of software enhancements in the other thread.

 

"... in a playlist"? anyone know how to make a tesla-compatible USB playlist?

 

Hey guys. this is not about 2.0 or 3.0, but about your desire to have music on USB in that size. I initially tried ~100gig drive. it worked, but probably every 3rd time of getting in the car and starting to drive, it forced me to restart the screen, as it locked up function. I down sized it to 60gigs. it happened less often, but it still happened. It appears that the built in media player can't handle reloading, or loading it everything you stop then start the car. if any one has any advice or a different experience, i'd love to hear it. Super bummed, i can't have all my music on a few drives and with me for all trips, etc.