# Help me listen to my music files while driving ... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 6, 2018, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121 "2018-03-06T16:38:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/21 "2018-03-08T00:29:33Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Duh, I don’t know why I overlooked a thumb drive - maybe because I’ve never seen someone else use it in their car. > > Which icon from my original pic is associated with using a memory stick as an audio source? You wouldn’t notice mine because it looks like another button on the stereo. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/22 "2018-03-08T00:32:08Z")
I’ve never brought the hard drive with me in the car. It stays at home - I can access it at work or whatever via FTP since I have a dedicated URL out there. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/23 "2018-03-08T13:48:08Z")
> [@Ornery\_Bob](#): > > I say dump the external hard drive and keep everything on a couple of USB drives. I have one in the car, which is essentially my backup, and one in my desktop. Aren’t there still questions about long-term storage on flash drives? For archiving all your music, a hard drive isn’t that expensive, and much more likely to be working four years from now. Plus, it’s a lot harder to lose. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/24 "2018-03-08T14:43:09Z")
Remember: RTFM. My car stereo warns against plugging a thumb drive directly into the stereo. Presumably for two reasons: The jiggling weight of the drive might dislocate the jack and a thumb drive sticking out can be easily knocked which also damages the jack _and_ the drive. My manual says to use a USB cable. Like I said, I use a micro SD card with a tiny adapter which is essentially no weight (and certainly less than a USB plug and some cable) and barely sticks out at all. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/25 "2018-03-08T16:22:48Z")
One more voice for the crowd: USB thumb drive. I have a 32 GB one in my car that holds audiobooks and standup comedy albums. Amazon has [this low-profile 64 GB Sandisk one](http://a.co/2VOMfBX) for $16. Low-profile is good to keep anything from hitting against it, but then again, you want one that you’ll be able to pull out of the socket, so if it’s in a hard-to-reach location, use your judgment. I don’t think I’ve even unplugged the thumb drive in more than a year. It just lives in there and fires right up when I call on it. Mostly, though, I use the Bluetooth connection and listen to podcasts on my phone. “_My Favorite Murrrrderrrr…_” ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/26 "2018-03-08T17:50:16Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > without having to buy MORE tech, please. > > I’m one of those people - I’ve still got my music collection on CDs. Attempting to both join the 21st century, and cut down on boxes of crap, I’ve been ripping them onto a dedicated external hard drive. > > I can listen to what’s on the hard drive using an app called “ES File Explorer” when I’m at home, or elsewhere if I have a computer with internet via FTP. But I can’t figure out how to listen while driving, which is important to me. > > (Did you know they don’t put CD players in new cars anymore?!? Get offa my lawn.) > > I’m including a photo showing all audio source options available in my car. Can any of them connect me to my music _without me having to buy another gadget_ or am I stuck with radio and Pandora? > > Note: I own a decrepit old iPod that still works, but don’t have an Apple computer, and if I ever had an iTunes account I’d have no idea how to access. (I have a vague sense that my late husband set one up. Not much help there.) > > In fact, cloud solutions might be iffy, since a lot of my CDs originated from his collection of burned discs that he & his buddies copied off each other in college. I’ve been told that cloud storage from Amazon or Apple checks for such piracy and … I dunno, deletes those tracks? Nukes all your data? Sends men in dark sunglasses & black suits to the door? > > I’m not a very tech savvy person (I just play one on TV) so there’s likely some very newbie mistakes here. Please help? > > (Bonus Q: if anyone can recommend a better file access program or app, I’m not finding ES File Explorer to be very user friendly.) > > [https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180306/4d8b449eb4f7cded508809ce87eb246b.jpg](https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180306/4d8b449eb4f7cded508809ce87eb246b.jpg) You can use audacity to fill your Ipod. I never use itunes. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/27 "2018-03-08T21:18:46Z")
A USB Cable plug is probably more at risk of being hit and damaging the port, than is a thumb drive. If necessary, look for a low profile (short) USB thumb drive. For $90 I bought a 256GB drive at Best Buy a year or two ago. Just how much music do you need? How do you navigate it from your stereo? Can you create playlists? These are more important questions… If you are paying for cloud storage - I don’t know, but it seems to me personal hardware is cheaper. Most places give you, say, 5GB for free, My music is pushing I thing 60GB. Plus any time to upload/download 60-plus GB via internet. Better off having a spare USB drive or two to maintain two (local) copies of everything, and check them every so often. (If one dies, run out an buy a replacement and re-copy.) A terabyte is cheap nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/28 "2018-03-08T23:01:15Z")
Google lets you store 50,000 songs on their servers and it’s free. Of course, you should always maintain backups on your computer or some kind of physical storage. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/29 "2018-03-09T06:20:01Z")
I’ve been told that using Google cloud services may be a bad idea because of how many CDs are burned copies. Rumor has it they may wipe due to piracy. Ditto Amazon. Can anyone confirm that? The hard drive has no interface so plugging it directly to the stereo won’t work. I need a play app of some kind to mediate. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/30 "2018-03-09T08:29:33Z")
Your car stereo has USB, but no built-in application to read from the USB? (I’ve never had a car new enough for me to get familiar with how this is normally done, but that seems odd to me.) Have you tried putting music on a thumb drive, plugging it in, and seeing what happens? ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/31 "2018-03-09T10:27:24Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > I’ve been told that using Google cloud services may be a bad idea because of how many CDs are burned copies. Rumor has it they may wipe due to piracy. Ditto Amazon. > > Can anyone confirm that? > > The hard drive has no interface so plugging it directly to the stereo won’t work. I need a play app of some kind to mediate. I’ve used Google for five or six years, and haven’t lost any files. Of course, as I noted, keep a backup of your music. But it works for me, no problems. You can stream your music if you don’t want it to take up space on your phone. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/32 "2018-03-09T13:25:35Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > As far as plugging the hard drive into the USB port, the catch would be that the port needs to provide enough juice to power the hard drive. I don’t think that’s an issue if you use a memory stick flash drive. That’s pretty much the story with my car. It can’t handle my terabyte drive, but it manages a 32GB thumb drive with no problem, and you can put a LOT of music on one of those things. ---
**Author:** ![Bumbershoot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bumbershoot/32/3428_2.png) [@Bumbershoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bumbershoot)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/33 "2018-03-09T14:18:39Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > I’ve been told that using Google cloud services may be a bad idea because of how many CDs are burned copies. Rumor has it they may wipe due to piracy. Ditto Amazon. > > Can anyone confirm that? > > The hard drive has no interface so plugging it directly to the stereo won’t work. I need a play app of some kind to mediate. I’ll echo **DavidwithanR** ’s suggestion- try loading some music to a thumb drive and plugging that in. And here’s another possibility: your car may have more than one USB port, with one dedicated to your music system and one just for charging. Last August I rented a Dodge van for a vacation trip and it was set up that way. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/34 "2018-03-09T14:32:43Z")
Carrying a running hard drive in a running car is a really bad idea. Hit a bump, the head will crash, and you now have only a stupid brick. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/35 "2018-03-09T15:00:10Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > I’ve been told that using Google cloud services may be a bad idea because of how many CDs are burned copies. Rumor has it they may wipe due to piracy. Ditto Amazon. > > Can anyone confirm that? > > The hard drive has no interface so plugging it directly to the stereo won’t work. I need a play app of some kind to mediate. By “no interface” I’m assuming you mean an app of some kind to play your music, right? You won’t need that in a car. Your stereo is the interface. Unless you mean the hard drive has no USB cable connection, in which case, how does it plug into your computer? Anyway, as said above, plugging this hard drive into your stereo is a bad idea anyway, for several reasons: [ol] [li]You’ll need to power your hard drive somehow, and I doubt the USB provides enough power to spin a hard drive. In my experience, USB ports in cars are very low-wattage; I still have a cigarette-lighter charger to charge my phone. Much faster.[/li][li]The motion of your car will be hell on a spinning hard drive. It’ll fail far quicker than it should.[/li][li]A large-capacity hard drive will most likely be too unwieldy to navigate for your music. When you play music in your car, you’ll be using your stereo’s buttons to navigate to the songs you want, and that tends to be far slower and more awkward than using a touch screen or a mouse and keyboard. Reduce the number of files and folders by putting just your “driving music” onto a USB thumb drive. A 64GB drive will still hold a ton of music.[/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/36 "2018-03-09T18:35:19Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > I’ve been told that using Google cloud services may be a bad idea because of how many CDs are burned copies. Rumor has it they may wipe due to piracy. Ditto Amazon. > > Can anyone confirm that? I really doubt it. In fact, what Google (and the rest) do for many songs is say “Ok, this is an upload of [Song] off [Album]” and then flag that track as available to you off their own music servers rather than uploading and keeping 15,000,000 distinct yet identical copies of “Careless Whispers” from every Wham fan. As I recall, Google pays a licensing fee to the record labels covering people uploading music as basically a “piracy tax” because it’s cheaper to do that and then take advantage of the benefits just flagging permission for legitimate tracks as described above. Plus, if you have your music collection stored with Google and you decide you want a new album, you’re much more likely to buy it through Google Music so they ultimately make it back. Edit: [Here’s an old article](https://www.androidpolice.com/2012/12/18/google-finally-brings-scan-and-match-to-play-music-doesnt-require-uploading-your-whole-friggin-library-anymore/) saying the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/37 "2018-03-09T18:40:07Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > By “no interface” I’m assuming you mean an app of some kind to play your music, right? You won’t need that in a car. Your stereo is the interface. Unless you mean the hard drive has no USB cable connection, in which case, how does it plug into your computer? > > Anyway, as said above, plugging this hard drive into your stereo is a bad idea anyway, for several reasons: > [ol] > [li]You’ll need to power your hard drive somehow, and I doubt the USB provides enough power to spin a hard drive. In my experience, USB ports in cars are very low-wattage; I still have a cigarette-lighter charger to charge my phone. Much faster.[/li][li]The motion of your car will be hell on a spinning hard drive. It’ll fail far quicker than it should.[/li][li]A large-capacity hard drive will most likely be too unwieldy to navigate for your music. When you play music in your car, you’ll be using your stereo’s buttons to navigate to the songs you want, and that tends to be far slower and more awkward than using a touch screen or a mouse and keyboard. Reduce the number of files and folders by putting just your “driving music” onto a USB thumb drive. A 64GB drive will still hold a ton of music.[/li][/ol] All very true. Since I’m the chucklehead who recommended plugging the hard drive directly into the head unit, I’ll say in my defense that my mistake was taking OP literally: > [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > without having to buy MORE tech, please. Sure, plunking down $5 for a 16G thumb stick is pretty close to “without having to buy MORE tech”, but I judged that OP meant it. Adding a new thumb drive to the mix is, indeed, “buying MORE tech.” I’m not much of one for fighting the hypothetical, because 9 times out of 10 it results in “solutions” completely useless to the requester. I’m a systems engineer. It’s my job to take requirements at face value. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/38 "2018-03-09T23:43:29Z")
I’m sort of late to this discussion, and I will concur that a USB thumb drive is probably the way to go, but… I had a similar issue and I found that my player in the car does a pretty crummy job of accessing and playing files on my USB. Playlists were a problem, I had only primitive DSP, the sort categories were sort of limited, and so forth. What I ended up doing was taking an older (no service) Android cell phone and inserting a micro-SD card so I could use it strictly as a media player. Then I used Bluetooth to connect it to the radio. It sits to the right of my steering wheel on a magnetic vent mount. Of course, the same thing could be done with your actual cell phone. This gave me a decent display and I could use any of the dozens of player apps (e.g., PlayerPro) to play, organize, create dynamic playlists, and otherwise do what I wanted to do with my music (and videos, if you are not driving at the time and are so inclined). When I want to synchronize, I just bring the cell phone inside and hook it up. I personally use MediaMonkey to do this, but there are lots of similar apps. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/39 "2018-03-10T00:05:41Z")
Google Play has no way of knowing whether an mp3 file is pirated or not. How they work also is they search their servers for the file, and if it exists, give you a “clean” one. If they don’t have it, then they upload your file, no questions asked. If the file does have DRM then Google doesn’t touch it. They won’t upload my one DRM file to the cloud. > [@Quercus](#): > > Aren’t there still questions about long-term storage on flash drives? > > For archiving all your music, a hard drive isn’t that expensive, and much more likely to be working four years from now. Plus, it’s a lot harder to lose. No more than the reliability issues with hard drives that they’ve had forever. Both might have potential issues with hot or cold cars, check their operating ranges. Seagate says 5 to 50 C (41 to 122 F), which can be easily reached in either direction. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121/40 "2018-03-10T01:47:11Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > I’m sort of late to this discussion, and I will concur that a USB thumb drive is probably the way to go, but… > > I had a similar issue and I found that my player in the car does a pretty crummy job of accessing and playing files on my USB. Playlists were a problem, I had only primitive DSP, the sort categories were sort of limited, and so forth. Something interesting that I found with my aftermarket JVC stereo is that the CD read the same files differently than the USB port. One used the name of the song and the other used the title. I found this out when playing digital books that I ripped. I also discovered that I had to number them starting with 1001 for books with hundreds of entries or it would jump around when it hit 10. I think it would go 10, 20 30. Something weird. If there were more than 1000 entries than I would have to number it starting with 10001. What I ended up doing was renaming both song name and title the same so I could download books to CD and USB sticks. Wish I knew what software I used. It was free but I lost it with the last computer crashed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-listen-to-my-music-files-while-driving/810121.md?page=3)