(character limit in title didn’t allow for a question mark :))
I use Spotify almost exclusively when listening to music in my vehicle. Every time I connect my phone, though, it automatically calls up iTunes and starts playing the first song, alphabetical-wise (I am SO sick of Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team’; at least, the beginning of it).
I don’t want to delete iTunes, because it contains all my Neil Young, which is not available on Spotify. I would die, just die if I could not access Neil when needed.
I can’t find any settings that allow my to disable the autoplay.
And I just paused while writing this to delete ‘The A Team’. Looks like I’m now going to get sick of Dave Edmunds ‘A1 on the Jukebox’.
Out of curiosity, have you tried starting Spotify playing on the phone, pausing it, and then connecting? I know that’s not a great solution; it’s the workaround I use on my iPhone 4 and my car stereo, not just for Spotify, but also Downcast for podcasts, and Audible or Overdrive for audiobooks.
Another pro tip: Find your favorite Neil Young song and rename it to start with AA.
I have the same issue, at least until I fish my I-Pod out from between the seat and the console…
This works for me: Start with the radio off. Start Spotify on your phone. It will start paused. Turn the radio on, and when the car radio says it’s checking for files, right THEN, un-pause Spotify.
And, for the Ed Sheehan thing. I had the same problem with a Julianne Hough song.
Don’t judge.
Go into the Music app. Select ‘Songs’. Check so it "Shuffles All’
Now it will just go through your play list and not always start on Julianne Hough. Stop. I said don’t judge.
My wife’s Rav4 does the same thing.
The phone’s apps can all be turned off and the phone turned off.
You can be listening to the car’s FM radio but as soon as you plug the phone into the USB to charge the radio thinks “Oh! You must want to listen to the music on your phone!” and immediately switches over and starts with the alphabetically first song in your library.
Drives us nuts.
Call me crazy, but: why use the USB connection to recharge if you hate the consequences? If it’s acting funny, get a car charger that plugs into the power port (we don’t call it a “cigarette lighter” anymore, right?) and use that instead. In my experience (which consists of one Nissan Altima), it’ll charge faster anyway. Set your phone for a Bluetooth connection if you want to use the car phone or other music services.
The USB plug on my car was too slow with the recharging, so now there’s just a thumb drive in it loaded with comedy albums, for long car trips. I do my charging through a discreet little cable poking out of my armrest, where the car charger is plugged into an auxiliary power outlet.
(I’m a fan of Anker car chargers, by the way. Very fast, and multi-port if you need it.)
Or get a charge-only USB cable. It doesn’t have the data wires and so the car’s computers never “know” there’s a music source at the other end of the cable.
An android device I had used to do this whenever I plugged in headphones. There should be an option in iTunes about ‘automatically start playing when … connected’ .
When my daughter rides in my car (or her car), it’s A Lovely Night from the cast album of “Cinderella” (performed by Laura Osnes). I’d like for her to let me listen to the song before she starts on the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend playlist, but apparently she’s sick of it.
Another possible workaround would be to create a silent audio file, and name it so it is alphabetically first. You’d still have to stop it, but at least you wouldn’t hear anything.
You’re dealing with Apple. They have their way of doing things, and they expect you to gonalong with it.
No, you’re dealing with the car/stereo manufacturer. Unless your stereo system has a “disable autoplay” option or you enjoy kludgey workarounds, you’re pretty much out of luck no matter what brand of phone you use. The stereo thinks it’s being helpful by automatically sending out the play command.
Yeah, the problem is that the car software is pretty dumb, and not possible to update. You’re probably out of luck. This is one reason that the infotainment systems in cars are such a crappy idea. They are shoddily built and never updated, and a car easily lasts a decade.
We rented a car that was so bad it would start playing music whenever we even changed the volume. We were using it for GPS, and had the phone plugged in because GPS is a battery drain, and every time we needed to change the volume, the fucking music would start playing again.
