I keep a USB drive with audio tracks plugged into my car. When I go to select songs, Gracenote reorganizes the tracks to completely different genres, overriding what is stored in the tags. So I'm attempting to find a workaround.

I changed all of the album names to be the same as the genres. I thought I could select what I want that way. I reformatted the USB drive and copied the files back to it. But when I plugged it into the car, all of the old album names are still there associated with each track! I have rechecked the USB drive and confirmed that information is not in the files.

So the infotainment system must have a way of copying that data from the drive and storing it in the car.

Can anyone tell me how to clear that? I've tried the NAV + BACK + MUTE reset twice. That did nothing.

Thanks

 

Try " Factory Reset" option in the last section of the MZD menu.

 

I didn't try a factory reset. I was a little concerned about losing other settings.

But it looks like I stumbled on a fix to stop Gracenote from overriding my metadata.

All of the files on the USB drive are named with the track name (song title). I changed all of the file names by adding sequential numbering to the beginning of the name. But I did not change the id3 tag track names. When I plugged the USB back into the car, all of the genres now display correctly.

The only thing I don't understand is why that worked. But I'll take it.

 

So I'm having this problem big time with a 2021 MX-5. I think Mazda must have done something to their software to stop your workaround.
I've tried naming the files with random letters but Gracenote jumps in there and picks it's own.

I believe I've narrowed it down to Gracenote looking at the Artist tag (it seems to ignore Album Artist). And so far, I've discovered that adding the '%' symbol to the Artist (anywhere) causes Gracenote to leave it alone (unfortunately it also displays the %).


So
ID3 tag Artist : Gracenote translated Artist
The Carpenters : John Alden Carpenter
Carpenters, The : John Alden Carpenter
Carpenters, The % : Carpenters, The %
Various Artists : Various Classical Artists

Once Gracenote identifies an artist, it then inserts it's own genre, general image and own Artist.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has done something similar, perhaps easier?
I can run a conversion of my thousands of FLAC albums to mp3 or ogg copying Album Artist to Artist with a '%' on the end. I'm thinking this should work.
But has anyone come up with other solutions?

By the way, I did try the Gracenote update (so I could stop halfway through and disable it) but I'm getting the same as others on here. No new update.

Thanks

 

Oh and if you want to force the car to reassess the music on your USB drive, just rename the root folder.

 

Depending on which Mazda model you have (I have a 2016) and I had this issue as well before I fixed everything. After going through several forums and keying pieces together on what to do, here are the exact steps on what I did to get mu album artwork showing up for the music that's on my USB drive.

1) I used MP3Tag to create my tags and filled in each appropriate section and uploaded the artwork that goes with the albums.
2) I used Sanse MP3 Art Editor to resize all my album artwork to 500 x 500.
3) I used Stamp MP3 Tag Editor to go through the files and made sure that each MP3 that had an album cover was embedded into the file.
4) I used MP3val to scan all the music for any issues, fixed the problems that were on the files, and re-scanned them again to make sure everything was good after fixing the issue. (This app does wonders, honestly).
5) I did a factory reset on my Mazda.

Boom, and everything works and now all the music on my USB drive is correctly displayed on my Infotainment system and my album art covers show.

I hope this helps, good luck!

 

Thanks for this.
Did you find other tags behaved themselves too?
So on my 2021 ND2, if I set Genre=Blues, it's ignored and given a category by Gracenote (Jazz I believe). I did try resizing artwork to 500x500 but haven't tried MP3Val yet. Since I had the same results using MP3 as with WAV, I decided to use WAV (I have a big thumb drive) and use random play most of the time... But I'd like to do random Blues.

 

Hey cloudy9music!

After doing those five steps that I mentioned in my post, all my other tags behaved themselves correctly and haven't had any issues since then and it's been about a week. I leave my USB drive (which has around 2,150 songs) in my car and switch to it whenever my Mazda 6 is done loading all my music selection choices to play audio (I mostly switch from my iPhone to the USB drive). I also play my music on random/shuffle play as you do.

MP3val is honestly a great tool in my opinion. It's an old platform but it gets the job done. Several of my MP3's had issues and it fixed every single one. As for the resizing, if you download Sanse MP3 Art Editor, you can put all your music into one folder and add it on the editor and it gives you a function to resize the artwork all at once. If the original artwork is smaller than 500 x 500, you have the option to skip that artwork if you wanted. I have a few that is smaller like 300 x 300 and I skipped them. The artwork still shows on my Mazda.

I'm not sure how Gracenote works on the newer Mazda's though, so the system might be different honestly. I have a 2016 Mazda 6, the version of Gracenote I have in my Mazda was the update from June 2018 which I believe is the last update for all of the 2014-2016 Mazda's. If you still have issues though with Gracenote, I would just copy all of the music you have on the jump drive onto a folder onto your computer. Use the 4 applications that I did and do a factory reset on the ND2 and you should honestly be fine!

 

Many thanks,
I'll give it a go

 

Good luck to you, mate!

Let me know if you have any issues, I'll try my best to help out.