Playlists on USB thumb drives

I am using a 16 gb thumb drive in my USB port on my Prius III. Presently, I have a LOT of folders, which makes scanning through my music extremely arduous. I would like to create playlists on the thumb drive, but I don't know what playlist format would work. I'm familiar enough with Winamp to create playlists in there, but will they work on the audio system?

And the reason I'm using this USB is because my iPod classic has issues. It works for about 1.5 songs before locking up.

No need to apologize for using a USB drive. If God didn't want us listening to music on USB drives He wouldn't have installed a USB port in the armrest.

I'm not sure the audio system is smart enough to read a playlist. It is designed to look for and read audio files on a FAT32 partition.

A USB thumb drive is a dumb file storage device, like a CD. Whatever folder/file directory structure you copy to it is all you get.

Winamp, for example, is a media player app installed on your PC. It can't be installed in a thumb drive or CD.

Thanks. I know what Winamp is. What I was wondering was, will the stereo recognize the playlist format (.pls)?

The stereo does recognize playlists on iPods, Zunes, Sansas, etc. So perhaps there's an XML-based format that it will recognize for the file system on a thumb drive. If anyone knows of one...

Comments in bold below.

ok...I'm a newbie...where is the USB drive on a GenIII? I just picked up my new 2010 with tech package...but dealer never mentioned USB port. Love to know. Thnx.

It's in the center console, back left corner.

You have to supply the drive. A Prius or Toyota branded thumb drive would make a nifty promo item. As stated the USB port is in the armrest under a cap.

ahhh...ok --- Thanks gang. I will take a look.

On a similar topic, I have a question:

I just purchased a 16GB USB thumbdrive for my Prius. So far I have added a ton of old radio shows (approximately 4GBs) and now want to start adding music. I do not think that I will fill the device any time soon but if I should would it be possible to plug in more than one USB drive using a splitter? I know that I can upgrade to a 32GB drive but I am curious about the use of a splitter. Thanks.

Toyota gave me one of those. Its case is made from bamboo.

Tom

Let us know how that works! Been tempted to set up a hub.

Just got a 2011 Prius ii. For the life of me I can't find a USB port to connect my thumb drive to. All I have in the center armrest is a power port and an AUX port for a jack. I'm wondering if the USB port was only available in level iii and up. I really don't want to buy an iPod if there is a workaround for this.

The USB is only available on the Two since the JBL package is only available on the Three.

There's a workaround for it. Just get a stereo cable, also called "audio auxiliary cable". I have a 3' Monster cable that I got on clearance at Target. Just plug the cable into the 3.5mm stereo jack in the armrest, and the other end into the headphone jack on the iPod... and you're good to go!! Monster, Belkin, Griffin are good brands, and I believe Target carries all three.

BTW... the stereo sounds better with an iPod than with regular CDs, in my opinion.

On my USB drive, all my music play out of order. Anyone know how I can fix it?

This is incorrect. We have a Gen 3 Prius III with nav. Inside the center console there's a 12V cigarette lighter receptacle, a 3.5mm stereo TRS jack, and a USB port.

Here's my thread that chronicles the learning curve.

Notice in my thread that the original TRS jack didn't work. Our dealership's Service Mgr. was skeptical about replacing it, but they did it anyway. The replacement part did work with our Sansa Fuze. So if your TRS jack does not work, make sure it's not operator error first, then see if your dealer will replace the jack.

My mistake, the USB is available on the Three, not the Two.

I read your post, then grabbed a USB thumb drive with about 8 .mp3's that I used a week ago while trying to figure out our Prius.

The JBL sound system uses some method to decide which .mp3 to play next. However, I have no idea what that method is. It sure isn't alphabetical!

I went back into the house and copied two more .mp3's over. Back to the car again. One of the new .mp3's played after the files that were previously on the thumb drive, which makes me wonder if the Prius sound system is looking at the metadata & playing the files by the time stamp?

The second .mp3 was ignored. WTH? This was the only file that did not have an ID tag downloaded off some online music tag website. It was a file ripped from a CD that I never labeled, so it was just "Track 6.mp3". Seems odd to me that the file was ignored, but that's what happened. I tried the file on the PC and it worked.

I have a problem hope you can help.
USB works fine, however, if I shut off the Prius and restart it shows the USB in Audio but can't read it. I warning dialog say can't read USB check connection.

I pull it out and reinsert and it works. Turn off car, turn on car it won't find. I don't touch the USB, just turn off and on the car.

Anyone else have/had this problem.

Thanks,
Jimitoucan

Here's an experiment. There's a very slight possibility that the nav can read a playlist format similar to what wimamp uses. create a new textfile on your computer and call it someplaylistname.m3u inside it put full path names to the files you want in that playlist like (these paths are just examples you will use what pertains to your actual folders on the drive):

mp3s\Rock\Aerosmith\Ultimate Aerosmith Hits\Rag Doll.mp3
mp3s\Classical\....something.mp3
mp3s\Country\....something.mp3
etc...

save this file at the root of your thumb drive for example:

Thumb Drive:
..\mp3s
......\Classical
......\Country
......\Rock
..\myplaylist.m3u

See if the radio recognizes the m3u file. if not try renaming it to .pls and see if that works. If they are seen but not read try forward slashes and not backslashes in the file. Who knows if the format is even recognized...

I'll try this myself too and see how it goes. If it does work then the good news is you can actually use winamp to create your playlist and then edit the textfile to change the paths rather quickly then copy it to your drive.