"Play More Like This" feature stopped working

Some time over the last few months the feature to "Play More Like This" music on the Toyota Prius C audio system stopped working.  The system displays a message "No similar songs found" even though it has found songs in the past...since there are over 8,0000 songs on the drive it can't possibly not find similar songs!

{A little background: my music is stored on a 32 gig thumb drive plugged into the USB port of the car audio system. The audio system allows you to browse and play music stored on the drive.}

"Play More Like This"  feature allows you to ask the system to search your music collection for similar songs and create  a list of songs to play. This is a great feature since you can get a new playlist with only hitting a single button rather than hitting multiple buttons to browse for songs....safer driving!

So what is the problem?

I'm on the trail to finding out what's wrong, but no answer at this point.

Here's what I've done so far:

• Searched the internet for postings about the problem. It seemed that few people have encountered this problem, and I could not get any clues to a solution.
• My suspicion is that there is some error on the drive causing the feature to return no songs to the "Play More Like This" search.  
• I plugged the thumb drive into my computer and ran "Error Checking"  on it. No errors were reported.
• I plugged another thumb drive into the USB port of the car with a sample music selection and tested the feature. IT WORKED! From this test I conclude that the car system is working and the thumb drive is the problem. But how to find it.....
• So I plan to delete files {say the newest ones from the last 6 months}  from the thumb drive and test in order to find the files that may be causing the problem...This is time consuming test since it takes time for the audio system in the car to read the contents of the drive and be ready for the "Play More Like This"  feature to be invoked. Like waiting for a computer to boot! Also I need some method the delete finds from the thumb drive without going back and forth from my car to desktop computer....e.g. a laptop or tablet.

So on to the testing, and I'll report back soon.

7/9/2013:

Deleting files did not help to isolate the problem, "Play More Like This" still would not work.

I also tried a program called "Mp3checker" to check the tags and format of the files on the USB drive.

Several files were bad according to the program. I removed these bad files, but "Play More Like This" still did not work.

Interesting though, I found some documentation that states the limitations of the USB music device; e.g. number of files, number of directories, etc.  I thought this pointed to a cause of my problems...
Limits are:

• Max directory levels:8
• Max number of folders:999
• Max number of files: 9999
• Max number of files per folder: 255

and then out of nowhere "Play More Like This" would work at times! So my testing so far as not isolated the problem...Oh well.. so still working on this problem.

Music playlists for Toyota Prius USB drive

I recently got a new car, a Toyota Prius C and am loving all the new technology : GPS Navigation  Bluetooth phone connection, IPhone integration, a USB port for my music files, and large touchscreen to control all the tech.

USB Port with almost hidden 32 GB drive

Cruzer Fit 32GB drive holds all my music

I purchased a SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 32GB USB Flash Drive  to hold my music files. I copied my MP3 music files to the drive, plugged it into the car and it worked right away. It is very convenient to control the playback of music using the large touch screen in the Prius and the steering wheel controls are very handy as well.

One problem though was that playlists I had created with WinAmp and Microsoft Media Player did not work; either the playlist did not show up when browsing for playlists in the car, or the playlist did not contain any entries. Jump to "What I did" below for a solution, or read on....

Doing a search in the Toyota forums yields lots of information with recommendations for solutions to this problem. But I had problems getting anything to work that well...either it was too complicated to set up, or it did not work all the time.

In my attempts to troubleshoot why playlists were not working; I learned a lot about their format and so was able to understand why they did not work. Basically the format of a playlist is a text file of statements that are pointers to the songs to be played. The actual statements in the playlist look like XML or HTML. You can use Notepad to open a playlist, to see what's there and even edit it to make corrections if needed.

For me, my MP3 files are kept on my media server that is "Drive T:" on my PC. So if a playlist contained a pointer to a music file on drive T, is was never going to work in the car...e.g. There is no drive T in the car!


     <title>John David Souther</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <seq>
            <media src="T:\John David Souther\01 The Fast One.mp3"/>
            <media src="T:\John David Souther\02 Run like a Thief.mp3"/>
            <media src="T:\John David Souther\03 Jesus in 3-4 Time.mp3"/>
      ....

So in order to build playlists that work in the car, the pointers or references to the music file must be correct. The problem was how could I do that easily.

Here is what I did:

1. I loaded all my music files onto the Cruzer Fit drive and plugged it into my computer. The cruzer USB  drive was assigned drive letter F:
2. I ran WinAmp on my computer, and started with no files in the media library. You can clear the library from the settings. 
3. I added all the music files on the Cruzer Fit drive F: to the WinAmp library. e.g. File -> Add Media to Library.
4. Next I created a playlist and SAVED the playlist to the root /main directory of the Cruzer Fit Drive F:
5. Since only files from the Cruzer Fit Drive are used in the playlist, the pointers to the music file are correct, and the playlist works in the car.

Notes:

What about my normal library of media on drive T:?  I use Windows Media Player and it's library to reference all my media on drive T: and other places on my home network.

The WinAmp library for me, will only reference music files on the Cruzer Fit drive.

Of course, I have to bring in the Cruzer Fit drive from the car whenever I want to create a playlist or play music in WinAmp on my computer.

The Cruzer Fit drive is tiny! and is not visible when in the car. So it  lives in the car and is always ready to play music whenever I am driving.

WimAmp playlists {.m3u} have a different format than Windows Media Player playlists {wpl}, but the idea, the references to music files work the same way, e.g. bad reference and the playlist will not work.

I also have a suspicion that some types of "tokens" used in Windows Media Player playlists cause the playlist not to work in the car, e.g. see the cid and tid tokens below...

<media src="Music\Rock\Thirty Eight Spec. - Rock&amp;Roll Strategy\Rock &amp; Roll Strategy - Thirty Eight Special - 03 - Little Sheba.mp3" cid="{A83EF887-27DA-4334-8628-D93DAFCA8469}" tid="{B3A73BCB-BDDD-4AA7-A114-F05CBF08F826}"/>