How to get USB music to play properly...

[CobraJay]

Looking for some help and/or insight on getting my USB drive to play the next album after one is finished. Its getting old that I just cant play all my Megadeth albums in proper order and have it go straight to all my Metallica albums in order, then Pantera, etc, etc. When one album finishes it wont automatically go to the next, I have to manually navigate to it. Im hoping its just an obvious setting I missed but here is what I have tried so far...

-Wiped out and redid all the tags with mp3tag, this got everything back to the correct track order instead of alphabetical when playing a single album. Renamed all the files/tags to Album-Track-Artist-Title. ***Still looking for a way to play all Albums from an artist in "album-track" order and not "alphabetical by track name".*** Followed the directions here https://www.markbrilman.nl/2013/10/getting-ford-microsoft-sync-to-recognize-your-id3-tags/

-Structured folders for each Artist-Album. Did not fix anything.

-Single root folder for all music, all music files loaded in the same folder regardless of Artist-Album. Did not fix anything.

When I get a chance Im going to play with the tags some more and/or try to create a single playlist with all my Metal on it. Has anyone got a handle on this yet, thanks in advance.

 

[Cornwallis]

I'll be interested if you find something on this and will be digging around as well. I was wondering about the same thing, it does seem kind of crazy that it won't just continue to play.

 

[CobraJay]

Well I think I got it fingered out!!! This is what worked on the USB that I redid all the tags and placed all the files in one base folder.

If you do a new search for music and go to the bottom of the list you should see "Explore Device". The first option here is "Play All", when you play everything from here it will play in the correct track order and go from one album to the next. You can see in the second pic that everything is in order from one album to the next and the third pic shows track one playing even though you dont see "Track 01".

I am assuming that since I have everything in the same folder is why it now can go from one album to the next regardless of artist. Not sure if this will work on my original USB with the normal tags and organized folders, will try that next.

 

[CobraJay]

*Update*

On my original USB (with fully structured folders) by using "Explore Device" I can see all my Artist folders just like using File Explorer on windows. It shows my root folder for the Artist and then the album folders inside of it. When you select "play all" from inside an Artist folder it will play all the albums in correct track order one after the next, or at least it did on the few I checked. However it will not go to the next Artist root folder on its own, you need to navigate to it.

When you select "play all" at the top level where all the Artist folders the play order is all over the place, not sure why but it probably has to do with the tags. It seems that executing a "play all" from the "Explore Device" tab inside an Artist folder allows the music to follow the proper track order and not go strictly alphabetical.

I still want to find a way to get any and all albums to play consecutively and keep the folder structure for browsing and navigation. If every song goes into the same root folder then "Explore Device" will have thousands of tracks to navigate through when I want to jump around my music.

I definitely dont have the time to go back through all my music and redo the tags so I may just have to settle for at least being able to play my albums by Artist one after the next in the correct track order by using the "Explore Device" option.