[mjposner]

I plugged in my 120gb iPod to the front usb slot. It recognized the Ipod and the screen locked, but it did not display any music. Is it the iPod, the BMW or possibly the cable?

[RavenGX]

I think it's no longer supported. Those things are over 10 years old
In the F-series it required a specific 50$ bmw cable that combined usb and aux.
And it needed to be plugged in in the armrest, but i think they removed the aux/usb connector and replaced it with a usb-c.

[Westside Guy]

You might have to transfer the music from the iPod to a computer and then to a phone with a large drive to access all of your music.

[Smudge10]

A micro USB external drive will work even better than an iPod. You can get them pretty small with a lot of storage, and the iDrive system will search your library a lot faster than an iPod can.

[mjposner]

i plugged in a 64gb micro usb, did not seem to work well. Only showing music from one or two folders. It did let me browse albums one time, next time I came out, it only showed one album.

[RavenGX]

Originally Posted by mjposner

i plugged in a 64gb micro usb, did not seem to work well. Only showing music from one or two folders. It did let me browse albums one time, next time I came out, it only showed one album.

Maybe a good time to switch to spotify? It's around 10$ per month I think and it's integrated in the car either through the bmw menus or trough apple carplay / android auto.

I like that you can keep listening to your music on your phone, or even when you get maintenance done on your car, you can continue listening to your music playlist in the replacement car

[BMWGirlFL]

Originally Posted by RavenGX

Maybe a good time to switch to spotify? It's around 10$ per month I think and it's integrated in the car either through the bmw menus or trough apple carplay / android auto.

I like that you can keep listening to your music on your phone, or even when you get maintenance done on your car, you can continue listening to your music playlist in the replacement car

I think Spotify sounds better logged on through iDrive with no connection to the Spotify phone app. Have you compared in your car?

[ZZZ4 G29]

Originally Posted by mjposner

i plugged in a 64gb micro usb, did not seem to work well. Only showing music from one or two folders. It did let me browse albums one time, next time I came out, it only showed one album.

The car has an internal 128gb hard drive specifically designed to store music files (among other things). The manual explains how to transfer and there are YouTube videos demonstrating.

[RavenGX]

Originally Posted by BMWGirlFL

I think Spotify sounds better logged on through iDrive with no connection to the Spotify phone app. Have you compared in your car?

i have not compared, i don't know if i would notice the difference, but i also prefer the bmw app, mainly because i find it easier to navigate while driving.

[mjposner]

Anyone no how long the transfer takes? It took over two hours in my 2016 with a 20gb hd. Is it a battery killer if I transfer a thousands of songs without car running?

[ZZZ4 G29]

It’s an SSD hard drive in the G29 now so the transfer should be way faster than in 2016.

[StanDiego]

Originally Posted by ZZZ4 G29

The car has an internal 128gb hard drive specifically designed to store music files (among other things). The manual explains how to transfer and there are YouTube videos demonstrating.

Are you possibly referring to older model BMWs? From what I can see in the manual and YouTube searches, the ability to store music on the internal hard drive has been eliminated. Data from the USB media is stored on the drive but not the actual media files. In other words, the USB device must remain connected and the media is read from the USB device with no capability to copy the actual media to the internal drive.

From the manual:

"Audio player and storage media
with USB port
Information on all titles, for instance artist,
genre or title, as well as playback lists, are
transmitted into the vehicle. This may take
some time, depending on the USB device, file
size, and number of titles.
During the transmission, the titles can be
called up via the file folder.
The information for approx. 16,000 tracks can
be stored in the vehicle."

Also take a look at this YouTube video, skipping to around the 4 minute mark: https://youtu.be/kLyiQTl81wE

[BMWGirlFL]

Originally Posted by StanDiego

From what I can see in the manual and YouTube searches, the ability to store music on the internal hard drive has been eliminated.

G29 music hard disk eliminated 7/20 (MY21 SOP).

[mjposner]

My build date is 2019-03-12. Will try transfer.

[mjposner]

So I took my 64gb USB stick which was formatted NTFS and reformatted as Fat32 (you need a special program to do this). REcopied my music and now it seems to work better and faster.