[bladeomatic]

-I went to the "iTunes Music Library" folder on my Mac and just copied over the folders (albums) I wanted onto a usb thumb drive. It's only got about 20GB, so I couldn't go crazy, but it's still a lot of files. Of course the "Greatest Hits" folder had about 10 CD's in it, but it seems the BMW got it all sorted out.

-Load via USB under center armrest. You can go to the "Media" area and should see the USB device show up. You can play songs directly from the stick and as they're playing, you have the option of saving the files from the entire USB. It takes about 20 min to get everything over. There's a small "25%" indicator next to the display that gives you an update on the upload status. The upload will even continue if you have to stop and restart the car later….it picks right up where it left off.

-I'm not sure but it seems to be handling my Full quality, AIFF, .mp3 and apple lossless files fine. I believe I've seen apple purchased songs make it over. Will try and verify more later.

-Try and do all your uploads at once…otherwise the car stores each upload as a different "device" (usb1, usb2, etc.) Which gets confusing.

-I made some mistakes on my selections and had to delete the entire music library. It's an option under "Manage Music Collection" Note, this takes awhile to delete, so give yourself time if you need to delete everything.

-There does appear to be a "Random play" function, but like many things in iDrive, it's not very intuitive and you have to hunt for it.

[jeffclev]

Purchased iTune songs import and play just fine. I confirmed this yesterday. It may just be me, but the sound quality or at least the volume level is much better from the HD than from the phone. I now have 5GB of open space on my phone!

[jgunnz]

By the way, confirmed that our cars do NOT recognize .m4a files. Some folks suggested they might, but I put a bunch of .mp3s and .m4as on a thumb drive, and I can only see the .mp3s when I plug it into the armrest. Time to get converting!

[Dodge DeBoulet]

Originally Posted by jgunnz

By the way, confirmed that our cars do NOT recognize .m4a files. Some folks suggested they might, but I put a bunch of .mp3s and .m4as on a thumb drive, and I can only see the .mp3s when I plug it into the armrest. Time to get converting!

I don't have a 2 series, so I can't say for certain that you're wrong, but I absolutely can play m4a files in my 2014 535ix. I stumbled on this thread doing a search for information on the need to convert from m4a to mp3 and found much that was conflicting. I finally gave up and just copied a handful of m4a's from the iTunes\iTunes Media\Music directory on my PC to a thumb drive and plugged it into the center console USB connector. I spot checked half a dozen songs and all of the album art. No issues . . .

I haven't tried importing any yet, but the hard drive is close to full now so I'll probably just leave the iTunes stuff on the thumb drive.

[jgunnz]

Originally Posted by Dodge DeBoulet

I don't have a 2 series, so I can't say for certain that you're wrong, but I absolutely can play m4a files in my 2014 535ix. I stumbled on this thread doing a search for information on the need to convert from m4a to mp3 and found much that was conflicting. I finally gave up and just copied a handful of m4a's from the iTunes\iTunes Media\Music directory on my PC to a thumb drive and plugged it into the center console USB connector. I spot checked half a dozen songs and all of the album art. No issues . . .

I haven't tried importing any yet, but the hard drive is close to full now so I'll probably just leave the iTunes stuff on the thumb drive.

Fair enough, maybe it's a bug with my system, because others have also suggested they had no problems playing/importing m4as. And I can't think why it would be different between a 535 and 235. But I definitely could only see the mp3s on my flash drive, not the m4as (which was about half of what I wanted to load). I converted them all to mp3 and they showed up and imported no problem, album art and all.

Still, weird...

[7Defcon]

Ok... Just plugged in my entire WD My Passport HDD with my entire iTunes Library(Movies and Music), and also contains directories of pictures and videos i've recorded with my phone.

I tested and have verified that MP3 and M4A files played fine for music.
MOV files from iPhone recordings also played.

What did not play were any of the music video/movie files I downloaded from iTunes which had a format of M4V.

I have a 228i with the technology package, if that matters at all.

[7Defcon]

What I thought was a pain, was that I had to go to the directories for each of files when I was searching for music. It didn't automatically load all the files, regardless of directory/subdirectory, like it is when connecting my iPhone via Bluetooth.

@jgunnz ... Maybe this was your issue? You had to select the exact directory of the files?

[bubsterino]

Originally Posted by ///M235i

Couple of things quickly I just literally copied my three series hard drive to a USB stick in the manage storage option and chose export to USB. When I got the new car I put in the USB stick and chose import. It's that simple. In terms of iTunes the car has Bluetooth so when your phone syncs via Bluetooth it will have all of your music and phone directory and everything accessible from Idrive. Also as you play each CD for the first time in your car it will save to your hard drive. And then you no longer have to put in the CD. It's a beautiful thing.

that is awesome. thanks for the tip.

[hoppy6698]

Originally Posted by bladeomatic

-I went to the "iTunes Music Library" folder on my Mac and just copied over the folders (albums) I wanted onto a usb thumb drive. It's only got about 20GB, so I couldn't go crazy, but it's still a lot of files. Of course the "Greatest Hits" folder had about 10 CD's in it, but it seems the BMW got it all sorted out.

-Load via USB under center armrest. You can go to the "Media" area and should see the USB device show up. You can play songs directly from the stick and as they're playing, you have the option of saving the files from the entire USB. It takes about 20 min to get everything over. There's a small "25%" indicator next to the display that gives you an update on the upload status. The upload will even continue if you have to stop and restart the car later….it picks right up where it left off.

-I'm not sure but it seems to be handling my Full quality, AIFF, .mp3 and apple lossless files fine. I believe I've seen apple purchased songs make it over. Will try and verify more later.

-Try and do all your uploads at once…otherwise the car stores each upload as a different "device" (usb1, usb2, etc.) Which gets confusing.

-I made some mistakes on my selections and had to delete the entire music library. It's an option under "Manage Music Collection" Note, this takes awhile to delete, so give yourself time if you need to delete everything.

-There does appear to be a "Random play" function, but like many things in iDrive, it's not very intuitive and you have to hunt for it.

Thanks for the info and run down, can't wait to load my music!

[tcinoc]

I think you can label the USB titles how ever you like.

[markm92]

On Windows in the iTunes folder, there are 2 separate folders: 'Album Artwork' and 'iTunes Media'... do I just copy all the artist folders from itunes media > Music to the USB, or do I also have to copy the album artwork folder?

Thanks in advance!

[alz0rz]

Originally Posted by MarkMcG92

On Windows in the iTunes folder, there are 2 separate folders: 'Album Artwork' and 'iTunes Media'... do I just copy all the artist folders from itunes media > Music to the USB, or do I also have to copy the album artwork folder?

Thanks in advance!

If you do that you will have to go into each folder to play the song in iDrive.. it's really annoying. You have to have all music in one folder to be able to play it regular.

[markm92]

Originally Posted by alz0rz

If you do that you will have to go into each folder to play the song in iDrive.. it's really annoying. You have to have all music in one folder to be able to play it regular.

Ohhhh... so basically just drag all files from the iTunes software into a folder on the USB? Will this way still structure it on iDrive into artist/album/song etc?

It's annoying as even though artwork is showing in iTunes, it's not always showing in other music players!