Anyone putting music (ie MP3's) on USB Flash Drives (thumb drives, mem sticks, whatever)?

I'm curous to know ... is there some way (like a utility program or something) to randomize the order of the songs?

I'm using 2GB drives, but my reader does not have a "random play" setting. Sine I have all the MP3's titled such as "Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive.mp3" ... the reader just wants to play all songs alphabetically by artist/song (since my files are named that way).

Just wondered if there was some way to rearrange the order on the drive into a random order, anything instead of the tedious task of placing a random number in front of each MP3 filename.

 

my stereo gives the option to do random on my flash drive. it also breaks it down to folder or whole drive.

 

You can always use your PC to copy all the MP3s into one folder & re-organize them that way & re-write them to your USB stick.

Not exactly the easiest way & would require having to do that each time you wanted to play them, but that is the only way I know of, short of buying a new stereo that could do it for you.

 

If you have not numbered the files you can try to randomize the order of the files using a program called total commander which will allow you to batch-number the files afterwards.

 

OK - thanks - I'll look into the commander program.

It's actually not my stereo - I spent $10 on ebay trying out one of thses little FM transmitter gadgets - it seems to work great, but it doesn't have a random play option - has every freakin' this else but random play .

 

Probably not what you want to hear, but if your player cant shuffle, manually naming them like previously said, is the only way to go. But its like a one time randomization, it wont ever change unless you do it again. I guess thats ok if you're just tired of going through 40 bon jovi songs just to get to another artist starting with a B

On another note, a sansa fuze with rockbox on it, is amazing. Plus you can nab a refurbished 4gb for like $20-30 bucks. and throw in a big microsd card if u need more room.

 

OK, I found a little utility program that will rename a whole batch of files at once - told it to add a 4 digit randonly generated number to the beginning of the file names, and it worked. Now - I understand this is a one-time thing. But - I have all my MP3's on my PC, so I can remake the file listing at anytime, and change the files names again, and reload to the thumb drive. So that works fine. Plus, I get just over 400 songs on a 2GB drive - and I can tell the transmitter to start at file # xxx out of 400 files - so I can start at a diferent place everytime I get in the car - I'm sure this will keep me entertained for several months before I have to rename those files again.

BTW - I have a Sansa View - 3000 MP3's and still not half full yet (16GB). Too bad the Sansa wants to charge instead of just play whenever it's plugged up to anything, or I could have just used it. I looked at that Rockbox stuff - but it doesn't mention compatability with the Sansa View.

 

Glad you found a way

BTW, my sansa has an option in the settings to change the way it works when plugged in USB, Can choose between MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and MSC (Mass Storage device Class.)

So when i plug it into my headunit through usb, it sees it as a usb thumbdrive basically while my sansa shows charging i can navigate through the mp3s, But if your fm transmitter has a usb input on it for thumb drives, i bet if your view has that option it will work the same way. (the view is higher end than a fuze anyway, dont know why it wouldnt have it)

You've probably already tried this anyway, just an option to try out if you haven't so far

 

OK - I updated the firmware in the View, so I can change modes - but the FM transmitter gadget still won't recognize it.

But that file renaming prog did what I wanted - thanks!

 

My KIV-901 will randomize all files, only files in a specific folder, or randomize the folders themselves.