[MR2]

When I plugged in an USB disk containing my music collection in my 2025 M2, I discovered that multiple artists and albums did not show up in the car's search engine.

At first I thought there was a problem with the disk, but the same issue surfaced after trying 2 different disks. So the issue must be due to some inherent limitation of the car's audio system.

Upon a careful reading of the NEC manual, I was surprised to find that the car can only handle about 16,000 titles (my disk contains over 50,000 titles). So this must be the cause of the above issue.

I wonder whether there is a way to work around this limitation? After all, why can't the car play directly from the USB disk, instead of having to first transmit the information to be saved in the car before playing?

[logjamexcalibur]

I feel like this is a common problem across car manufacturers. Ultimately, most will be playing music from their phone so I guess brands don’t feel the need to implement what would seem like a simple fix.

[MR2]

It suddenly dawned on me that one can completely bypass the iDrive USB audio limitation by using an old phone that takes a MC card, such as the Galaxy Note 9, which has been lying around in my drawer for years. One can essentially use the phone as a music player but outputing the audio to the iDrive via BT.

It's working like a charm. I have my entire music collection (over 50000 tracks) on a 1tb MC card at my finger tips in the car.