Ever create what you thought was a working MP3 playlist and put it on a USB thumb drive only to find out that songs are not playing in the order your selected, that newly added songs aren’t showing up or be recognized from voice command, or that you are not finding all the songs under a particular artist that you had on the original playlist? Ever just give up because it was too hard or just got used to the same songs you originally put on the USB thumb drive because you can’t seem to get the new songs to be recognized by Sync? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then this blog is for you! Even if you have a working USB thumb drive music playlist, there may be tips here that will help you as a correctly setup playlist will work in any audio device that accepts USB thumb drive MP3 playlists. Basically you can pull the USB thumb drive out of your Escape and plug it into most audio devices and the songs should play in the same playlist order that you selected. This is a rather complex subject with a lot of background to cover first, so please read through everything to understand how everything is all tied together.
OK, to start I need to briefly mention the program that originally made it easy to make MP3 music mixes in the order of your choosing: Musicmatch Jukebox. This PC program first allowed users to neatly organize their music by artist in ways that no other program to date has ever came close to. In order versions of the software, the user could rip MP3 CDs that could play in the Escape and most vehicles that recognized MP3 CDs. This started the whole “all nighter” or “vacation-long” MP3 mixes craze. It was great to fit all (or most) the music you had in compressed MP3 format on a CD as hundreds of songs could fit on a single CD. In the newest versions of the program, functionality was added to allow MP3 playlists to be put onto a USB thumb drive as well. There was also a “Super Tagging” feature that would allow the user to easily clean up artist/album/track missing data or discrepancies. I personally liked the “level volume” feature where the program could volume level all the songs in your library, eliminating “loud” or “quiet” songs. Those were the good ol’ days. The program had it’s issues: being slow and particularly finicky during installation on a Windows PC with certain software versions or certain installation CDs, but if you got it to install and work, it was a life-changing program.
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Like most things these days, we just can’t seem to have anything nice or convenient anymore. Like just about everything that Wall Street touches turns to rubbish, Music match Jukebox was no different. They were acquired by Yahoo. Originally a Yahoo Media Player was offered to keep original Musicmatch Jukebox fans interested, but it was not the same. After a few years, Musicmatch Jukebox software was completely axed by Yahoo. People were still able to download versions of the software and use that on their PC’s for a time. Windows XP (still the best OS in my opinion) was the last Windows OS that functioned with Musicmatch. As support of XP waned and holdout users migrated to Windows 7 and then 10, Musicmatch Jukebox and a lot of older PC games users loved became unusable even under Windows compatibility mode. Musicmatch Jukebox is but a memory at this point unless someone has an old Windows XP computer kicking around somewhere just to use for older 32 bit programs like Musicmatch Jukebox. Even if you have an old PC, many of the downloadable install files are corrupted and do not even allow installation. Basically, for the past decade many of us have had to “cope”, “try out” and “tinker” doing things with other programs or manually that Musicmatch Jukebox just did for us in the past. It’s sad actually…but there are solutions.
I have spent hours and hours researching this topic for years, trying out various media jukeboxes and tinkering with things to get them to work the way I wanted or expected…and I have come up with the best solution for properly labeling/cataloging your music, organizing your music and creating a workable MP3 playlist that plays the songs in the order that you want. Please note this is for PC users with Windows 10. If you use Apple, Linux or Ubuntu, you will have to research for similar methods to do the same thing. I am not big on using a smart phone for such tasks because of the small screen and font, but there may be a way to accomplish these tasks on there as well. Again, my solutions are meant for a Windows 10 PC.
Many folks out there are used to other programs such as Windows Media Player or other jukebox programs that accomplish the same tasks, so this may not be so foreign to you. After much research and after watching many Youtube videos I came to the conclusion to use Windows Media Player to create MP3 playlists. Personally, I dislike the layout and library organization of Windows Media Player and I to this day I click on music in Windows folders to get the music I want to play on my PC because the interface on Windows Media Player is that bad. Other free programs out there are not much better and, from what I see as available right now, I did not ant to invest $ in pay programs that don’t look like Musicmatch Jukebox. There is still a big void in the world that Musicmatch Jukebox left upon it’s departure. We’ll go back into Windows Media Player in a bit, but first lets get your music all organized and cataloged properly. Without a good foundation, your MP3 playlist will be “shaky” at best!
Steps In making a working a working MP3 playlist on your USB thumb drive to use in your vehicle or other music device.
1) Getting your music organized and cataloged correctly. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. You’ve added a song to a playlist and it is not coming up under the artist or album you want (either through a viewable playlist in your vehicle or music device, or through voice command). As we collect, download and acquire music over the years, the file labeling of the music is generally all over the place. We all have busy lives and don’t have much time to spend to re-label hundreds or even thousands of songs (all something that Musicmatch Jukebox would just do for us)…but if you want to solve the issues you are having, this time investment will save you so much time and frustration over years to come.
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2) Next, let’s talk USB thumb drives. You may know that there are different kinds of speed designations, different storage capacities, different shapes to the drives and different data transfer speeds even within the same speed designation! For someone new, it is rather daunting, but I will take some of the confusion out of USB thumb drives for you.
3) Alright, you’ve got your music library in order now and you’re ready to make an MP3 playlist, right? Good. Now there are three parts to make a true functioning MP3 playlist: Gathering the particular songs you actually want in the playlist, putting those songs in the order that you want and creating and updating an M3U playlist.
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OK, to start I need to briefly mention the program that originally made it easy to make MP3 music mixes in the order of your choosing: Musicmatch Jukebox. This PC program first allowed users to neatly organize their music by artist in ways that no other program to date has ever came close to. In order versions of the software, the user could rip MP3 CDs that could play in the Escape and most vehicles that recognized MP3 CDs. This started the whole “all nighter” or “vacation-long” MP3 mixes craze. It was great to fit all (or most) the music you had in compressed MP3 format on a CD as hundreds of songs could fit on a single CD. In the newest versions of the program, functionality was added to allow MP3 playlists to be put onto a USB thumb drive as well. There was also a “Super Tagging” feature that would allow the user to easily clean up artist/album/track missing data or discrepancies. I personally liked the “level volume” feature where the program could volume level all the songs in your library, eliminating “loud” or “quiet” songs. Those were the good ol’ days. The program had it’s issues: being slow and particularly finicky during installation on a Windows PC with certain software versions or certain installation CDs, but if you got it to install and work, it was a life-changing program.
Like most things these days, we just can’t seem to have anything nice or convenient anymore. Like just about everything that Wall Street touches turns to rubbish, Music match Jukebox was no different. They were acquired by Yahoo. Originally a Yahoo Media Player was offered to keep original Musicmatch Jukebox fans interested, but it was not the same. After a few years, Musicmatch Jukebox software was completely axed by Yahoo. People were still able to download versions of the software and use that on their PC’s for a time. Windows XP (still the best OS in my opinion) was the last Windows OS that functioned with Musicmatch. As support of XP waned and holdout users migrated to Windows 7 and then 10, Musicmatch Jukebox and a lot of older PC games users loved became unusable even under Windows compatibility mode. Musicmatch Jukebox is but a memory at this point unless someone has an old Windows XP computer kicking around somewhere just to use for older 32 bit programs like Musicmatch Jukebox. Even if you have an old PC, many of the downloadable install files are corrupted and do not even allow installation. Basically, for the past decade many of us have had to “cope”, “try out” and “tinker” doing things with other programs or manually that Musicmatch Jukebox just did for us in the past. It’s sad actually…but there are solutions.
I have spent hours and hours researching this topic for years, trying out various media jukeboxes and tinkering with things to get them to work the way I wanted or expected…and I have come up with the best solution for properly labeling/cataloging your music, organizing your music and creating a workable MP3 playlist that plays the songs in the order that you want. Please note this is for PC users with Windows 10. If you use Apple, Linux or Ubuntu, you will have to research for similar methods to do the same thing. I am not big on using a smart phone for such tasks because of the small screen and font, but there may be a way to accomplish these tasks on there as well. Again, my solutions are meant for a Windows 10 PC.
Many folks out there are used to other programs such as Windows Media Player or other jukebox programs that accomplish the same tasks, so this may not be so foreign to you. After much research and after watching many Youtube videos I came to the conclusion to use Windows Media Player to create MP3 playlists. Personally, I dislike the layout and library organization of Windows Media Player and I to this day I click on music in Windows folders to get the music I want to play on my PC because the interface on Windows Media Player is that bad. Other free programs out there are not much better and, from what I see as available right now, I did not ant to invest $ in pay programs that don’t look like Musicmatch Jukebox. There is still a big void in the world that Musicmatch Jukebox left upon it’s departure. We’ll go back into Windows Media Player in a bit, but first lets get your music all organized and cataloged properly. Without a good foundation, your MP3 playlist will be “shaky” at best!
Steps In making a working a working MP3 playlist on your USB thumb drive to use in your vehicle or other music device.
1) Getting your music organized and cataloged correctly. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. You’ve added a song to a playlist and it is not coming up under the artist or album you want (either through a viewable playlist in your vehicle or music device, or through voice command). As we collect, download and acquire music over the years, the file labeling of the music is generally all over the place. We all have busy lives and don’t have much time to spend to re-label hundreds or even thousands of songs (all something that Musicmatch Jukebox would just do for us)…but if you want to solve the issues you are having, this time investment will save you so much time and frustration over years to come.
- Firstly, consider having a couple of “master folders” to store your music files in. Once could be called “All Music” for all the music you have. Another could be called “Playlist Music” or something like that for all the music you ACTUALLY LISTEN TO. We all have songs on our playlists we wish were not there. I don’t think I can name a single album that did not have at least one bad song on it, LOL! It’s nice to save “All Music” in one folder where those songs still reside. That way if your music tastes change over the years, you can just put it into your “Playlist Music” folder.
- Secondly, let’s get the folder management of artists and songs straightened out. Some of you may even have all your raw songs from every artist dumped into a single folder. This is the least ideal scenario. Take the time to create a SINGLE FOLDER for every artist and put the relevant songs into the folders accordingly. If you have multiple folders for the same artists, to avoid confusion I suggest consolidating them into one. For example if you have one folder for Tom Petty and another for Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, consider putting all the songs under Tom Petty. If you have some folder for “This Artist Feat (featuring) That Artist, for the purposes of organization, you really should put what is in that folder under the primary artist’s folder.
- Thirdly, let’s deal with different file formats. Although many newer music devices and vehicles (or newer Sync versions) can actually recognize and play WMAs and other music file formats, for the sake of having your music playable in all MP3-compatible devices, lets get those WMAs and other file formats converted into MP3s. You can search for such files by sorting the folder by file type. You can try a file format conversion software program that will accomplish make an MP3 file out of a WMA file. You can also use Windows Media Player to rip a standard audio CD (not in MP3 formatting). Then, till using Windows Media Player, copy the songs back into your PC and save them as MP3s (you’ll have to manually add in all the file labeling, something we will cover next). WMAs will not play on My Ford Touch (Sync 2), so if a song you have on your playlist is a WMA, it will not play in your vehicle.
- Thirdly, now that you have your folders sorted, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of actual song file labeling. This is one of the most critical steps for organizing your MP3s by artist and album artist. Since we have all been adding to our music libraries over the years, there has been some Windows system changes that have complicated things and left certain required fields black in your music file labeling. If you used Musicmatch Jukebox years ago or download/save music with certain programs today, although you have to enter artist/song data in a bunch of fields, there is still a field or two missing critical to MP3 playlists that must be filled in to avoid issues.
- Mainly when the “artist” field was filled in years ago, during the change to Windows, the artist field was literally split into two for “Contributing Artist” and “Album Artist”. I have found that the “artist” field had been defaulted into the “Contributing Artist” field. This is a HUGE problem as Sync will not search artists by contributing artist name when there is no album artist entered. Basically that song will be in the “black hole” of the MP3 playlist. You will literally need to right click on every single song file and click on properties and then on the details tab to check the fields. This is the most time-consuming part of your MP3 playlist and file organization project…but once it is done, it is a forever investment and you won’t have to do it again. I deliberately posted the above screen shot with the song name Panema spelled incorrectly. When you comb through your music, fix any misspellings. If you don’t and you label the playlist song spelled correctly, it will not play on your MP3 playlist when it should.
- Next let’s talk about file labeling “garbage” that can cause file name searching issues. By “garbage”, I mean things like “Artist A Feat Artist B” listed as the artist name or having a featured artist name in the song title. What I suggest is taking any “featured” artist and putting that data in the file comments box instead of the “Contributing Artist” field to avoid confusion…but that is up to you. Ford Sync searches by “Album Artist”, not by “Contributing Artist”, so I guess it would no harm if you put a featured artist in that spot. Now making changes like this in file info is generally isn’t just a problem for older and some newer music MP3s, even new songs downloaded from pay-per-song sites such as iTunes will have featured artist info in the wrong field or other junk that you may have to correct in the file data. To make matters worse, in many cases you can’t even change anything because of the way they formatted for MP3 before you downloaded it. On these “stubborn”, unchangeable files, the only true way to fix it is to burn the song(s) to a music CD (Not an MP3 CD), then copy them back to the computer and enter the labeling as you see fit. If Windows Media Player doesn’t work for record the file back to your computer, you can try an alternative program such as Audacity with a short headphone jack cord plugged into the audio output and microphone in ports.
- OK, you’ve been patient so far and this is a lot of info. One more thing before we go onto the actual playlist side. We’re going to put an example in practice on a new song. You go through the normal process of labeling the new music file accordingly but then go back into the field details afterwards to fill in the “Album Artist” field to make sure the song is searchable.
2) Next, let’s talk USB thumb drives. You may know that there are different kinds of speed designations, different storage capacities, different shapes to the drives and different data transfer speeds even within the same speed designation! For someone new, it is rather daunting, but I will take some of the confusion out of USB thumb drives for you.
- USB format speeds. In a nutshell there are three most popular USB speeds. USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. USB 1.0 is the oldest USB standard. You can usually find a white color inside a USB 1.0 port or plug. It has the slowest data transfer speeds. USB 2.0 is a faster USB data transfer protocol and has a black colored port or plug. USB 3.0 is the fastest data transfer protocol so far and has additional connection pins on the plug to make that happen. USB 3.0 has a blue color on the port or plug ends. To make things more confusing, there are “improvements” to given USB speeds. Sort of like a new version of software, a “.” Followed by a number means an even faster USB speed. A USB 2.1 port is faster than a USB 2.0 port. A USB 3.2 port is faster than a USB 3.0 port. I know Gen 3 Escapes with Sync 2 & 3 had a USB 2.0 port with a black color port. It is possible that Gen 4 escapes have a blue port, which would indicate USB 3.0…but I am not sure on that
- Within a given USB format speed, there are different actual data transfer speeds. Well known manufacturers such as SanDisk or PNY tend to have better data transfer rates for a given USB speed. Think of USB speed specs as “speed limits”. A speed limit is known for USB 2.0, 3,0 and so on, but that doesn’t mean that a USB thumb drive manufacturer will actually manufacture a USB thumb drive that is that fast. For example, it is possible to get a good SanDisk 2.0 drive that has faster actual data transfer speeds than a cheap Chinese USB 3.0 thumb drive! Crazy right? Get the best disk you can afford for a given USB designation, and get from a well-known manufacturer. With USB 3.2 being out, I would not get any protocol less than USB 3.0. Remember a USB 3.0 port will allow you to use a USB 2.0 drive at USB 2.0 speeds. Likewise, a USB 2.0 port will not be able to read any faster than USB 2.0 protocols if you insert a USB 3.0 drive. The Escape uses a USB 2.0 port, so get a fast USB 2.0 or 3.0 thumb drive. A fast thumb drive will allow the Escape to index an entire 1,000 song playlist in just the time it takes to play a single song. I’ve had a cheap Chinese USB 2.0 drive take a good 20 minutes or more to index the entire thumb drive before. Get a better drive, you won’t regret it.
- In regards to USB thumb drive shapes, they come in all sorts of colors, designs and physical sizes. For a small center console in an Escape, I recommend you get a stubby SanDisk Cruzer Fit, with only sticks out about ¼” from the port. That’ll prevent damage to the actual USB port inside the console as you are much less likely putting pressure on the USB thumb drive with contents inside or reaching inside the center console.
- In regards to capacity of the USB thumb drive, if you have 1,000 songs, I think a 10 GB minimum capacity is in order. The more the merrier. If you right click on your “Master Music” folder and click on properties, it will tell you the total size of all the music you have in it. Then you will have an idea of what capacity USB thumb drive to get.
- As far as formatting of your USB thumb drive to be compatible with the Ford Sync system, be sure to format the drive in a FAT32 for Sync 2 (MFT), or exFAT32 for Sync 3 and above. If the correct formatting is not used, the drive may be unrecognizable. You can format the drive by right clicking the drive in Windows and selecting Format Drive. Then pick the correct format type for what you need.
3) Alright, you’ve got your music library in order now and you’re ready to make an MP3 playlist, right? Good. Now there are three parts to make a true functioning MP3 playlist: Gathering the particular songs you actually want in the playlist, putting those songs in the order that you want and creating and updating an M3U playlist.
- So first you need to assemble the particular songs that you want. Either use Microsoft Media Player to pick out the songs you want or simply right clicking on songs in folders you want to add. Click on Add to Windows Media Player List.
- Next, organize the songs in the order that you want (you can make changes later even after you save the playlist in Windows Media Player).
- Then look at the songs you have added to the Windows Media Player List. The first screenshot shows “Unsaved List” at the top.
- Next, click on Save As and name your playlist. For this, I just called it “Sample Playlist”. After you have saved the list CLOSE Windows Media Player.
- Then open Windows Media Player and open your newly saved playlist. This would be a good time to insert the USB thumb drive you want to use into your computer so Windows Media Player will recognize it.
- Click the Sync tab over the playlist on the right side of the screen. You may need to select all the songs in your playlist on the left right and then drag them into the Sync window on the right if the songs are not already there.
- Follow the prompts to Sync your USB thumb drive and give yourself enough time for all the music to transfer to your USB thumb drive. As mentioned earlier, a drive with faster data transfer rates will really help speed monster-sized playlists!
