Forcing Apple-based hardware to sort by directory/filename

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Help! I just got a new car stereo that appears to handle MP3 music on a USB stick really badly - it doesn't support sorting by directory/filename and can ONLY sort by metadata in the file (Album, Composer, Song Name, etc). It appears to have been designed with Apple's iPod/iPhone compatibility and file handling standards in mind (i.e. it sucks ass and can't handle files sorted by directory/filename). So a lot of video game music I own or standalone songs that don't belong to a traditional 'album' can't be sorted and played in a logical order. Worse, any kind of "playlist" I have on my USB stick, where I stick a bunch of random songs I have from various albums into one directory with the expectation of being able to play it by filename, is useless now, because many NES/SNES music ripped files I have don't have album info embedded into them and I'm not going through and typing that out manually for a thousand music files.

Is there any kind of a program or script out there that can create 'spoofed' albums for music devices that use Apple's awful music handling standards like iPods by reading a directory, wiping all the song metadata out of the files, and rewriting the song info in each so that the directory becomes an 'album' that plays in the alphabetical order the files are sorted in on your computer? Essentially creating albums out of each directory you want so you can, essentially, force an iPod style device to sort and play your songs in alphabetical order with each directory separated the way a PC normally would?

[Dochartaigh]

So you just want to add a certain Album, genre, or composer to a bunch of MP3's at once?

The awful Apple iTunes, or pretty much any decent music player on your computer can re-write MP3 ID3 metadata tags to multiple tracks at once so you can put whatever album name (or artist, genre, whatever) you want on multiple tracks with a couple clicks. Only thing which would be a pain is if you want them to play in a certain order (based on track number?) where you might have to edit that track number manually to have them in a certain order.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Thanks, I'll have to take a look. I wasn't aware of the best way to do this, so I'll take a look and see if any of my current software allows me to do this en-masse, and then I guess I can figure out the song order from there. I was hoping someone else was sufficiently annoyed by this to have a more automated option available but I'll see how I manage.

[gordon-creAtive]

For any kind of mass MP3 tag editing and filename management I can really recommend the free windows software "MP3tag" (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/). Especially the mass rename with placeholders might be a feature you want to try.

[HydrogLox]

I just got a new car stereo that appears to handle MP3 music on a USB stick really badly - it doesn't support sorting by directory/filename and can ONLY sort by metadata in the file (Album, Composer, Song Name, etc). It appears to have been designed with Apple's iPod/iPhone compatibility and file handling standards in mind (i.e. it sucks ass and can't handle files sorted by directory/filename).

Do you have actually any evidence that the order is determined by the metadata? My 5-year old stock car stereo supports USB connectivity with iOS devices - being able to control them from the dash. But when it comes to mp3 files in folders on a vanilla USB flash drive it is absolutely braindead. The order of the folders and files is determined by the creation order on the storage device. So the only way I could impose any order was to erase the drive completely and then have a script create the folders and copy the files in the exact order that I wanted. So whenever the content needed to be changed: 1. edit script 2. erase flash drive 3. run script.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I know the sort of devices you're talking about - I have an older MP3 player I really like and when I upload new files I have to select the "sort by file name" option after uploading new ones to a directory cause it initially orders by the date they were added on the MP3 player. Otherwise it's quite painless and works fine

This new one in the car stereo literally only has five sorting options, and none of them are by filename or file creation date. It's "Album" "Artist" "Song Name [the one in metadata if any overrides the actual file name]" "Genre" or "Composer".

If I choose "Song Name" it pulls every single song on the MP3 key and orders them all by song name, just jumping around between albums. No way to select the directories on the USB stick. Album only sees songs with the metadata in them, so the only way I can think of sorting them the same way you normally would on a PC is manually making each directory into an 'Album' to select them here as well as setting a track number for each.

The other option is just to use my MP3 player to play via the Aux port of the stereo and sort them on the MP3 player, but then if my MP3 player dies in the middle of a car trip it's no good (since it apparently can't charge and play music at the same time).

[trivial]

The other option is just to use my MP3 player to play via the Aux port of the stereo and sort them on the MP3 player, but then if my MP3 player dies in the middle of a car trip it's no good (since it apparently can't charge and play music at the same time).

In that case charge from what used to be called the cigarette lighter. Unless you have an iPhone 7 without a Lightning breakout dongle this should work.

[nem]

Seconded MP3Tag.

Do you have actually any evidence that the order is determined by the metadata? My 5-year old stock car stereo supports USB connectivity with iOS devices - being able to control them from the dash. But when it comes to mp3 files in folders on a vanilla USB flash drive it is absolutely braindead. The order of the folders and files is determined by the creation order on the storage device. So the only way I could impose any order was to erase the drive completely and then have a script create the folders and copy the files in the exact order that I wanted. So whenever the content needed to be changed: 1. edit script 2. erase flash drive 3. run script.

You could also use a FAT sorter like this:

http://www.luisrios.eti.br/public/en_us/projects/yafs/