Thread: loading MP3s on a thumb drive

has anyone done this? I got an Alpine car stereo that has an USB port and want to use my thumb drive to play music on it.

how do you get it to work?

and, is the thumb drive formattable?

The thumb drive is recognized as removable media. If you're on a Windows system, just go to My Computer, right click the removable drive and select Format. Then just do a quick format and watch the progress bar go by.

Once you're done, you can start drag-and-dropping mp3s in there. Then just pop the drive on your car's usb interface and go. It SHOULD automagically pick it up.

The steps are quite similar on a Mac except for the formatting part. You would need to use the disk utility. You can pull that up through spotlight (apple-key + space).

I'd imagine that the USB port is for music players to connect to, not removable media. However, if the stereo can recognize and play music off a flash drive, then you, my friend, have a pretty nifty setup.

formatting would be the step I need to take.

I've done the file swap on the "removable disk". not supported, the radio will say. then I tried the burn using Itunes. not enough space, it will say, even for one song.

the thumb drive I have is 4GB.
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Originally Posted by King Taco

I'd imagine that the USB port is for music players to connect to, not removable media. However, if the stereo can recognize and play music off a flash drive, then you, my friend, have a pretty nifty setup.

USATODAY.com - Car stereos come with USB ports

Originally Posted by BeerMan

formatting would be the step I need to take.

I've done the file swap on the "removable disk". not supported, the radio will say. then I tried the burn using Itunes. not enough space, it will say, even for one song.

the thumb drive I have is 4GB.
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Mac or PC?

pc

it seems that using the Windows Media Player is the best thing to do.

Originally Posted by quix

USATODAY.com - Car stereos come with USB ports

Thanks for the link! It's an old article. I guess I'm not up to date on the latest technology. What's next? Touch based technology on cell phones?