# Creating playlist for car audio
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** player
**Created:** [February 9, 2026, 6:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659 "2026-02-09T18:12:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 6:12pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/1 "2026-02-09T18:12:20Z")
I am trying to create playlist combining several folders containing subfolders and I want to maintain the sequence. If I sort according to path the list appears OK in mp3tag but not when I play the usb stick in the car.
If I could include the name of the folder in naming the song I think everything would be OK but how could I do that?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 6:30pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/2 "2026-02-09T18:30:24Z")
You first of all have to find out what kind of file/folder syntax your car player accepts.
E.g. Windows based paths have the backslash `\` as separator between the path segments, Linux/Android based OS have the slash `/`.
I think it would be easiest to have a flat folder structure without path components.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 6:44pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/3 "2026-02-09T18:44:49Z")
I am not quite sure, it is mercedes mbux using usb fat32. However no problem flat formatting, if the name of the folder is included in the name of the song I would have no problem
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 6:47pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/4 "2026-02-09T18:47:35Z")
From what I'm reading, you only want to copy a couple of files to the USB stick and play them in sequence, not an M3U playlist file that references the different tracks. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> [@Georgva1](#):
>
> If I could include the name of the folder in naming the song I think everything would be OK but how could I do that?
You can try using **Convert → Tag - Tag** for `TITLE` using
`%_directory% - %title%`
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 7:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/5 "2026-02-09T19:02:07Z")
Yes but it's quite complicated. There are maybe 50 folders each containing several subfolders and each subfolder containing the tracks!
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/6 "2026-02-09T19:07:29Z")
The music is already in the usb stick and this stick I use in the car, so there should be a playlist probably.
The player in the mbux of mercedes will not play the tracks continuously, when I choose a (sub)folder and it reaches the last track it will start from the beginning.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 7:11pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/7 "2026-02-09T19:11:09Z")
Are you sure that the player interprets playlists?
So far it looks to me as though it plays the selected folder.
Maybe you have to look for a different setting for the selection that looks at the tag data and not at the folder.
In order to interpret tag data, the tags would have to be filled.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 7:24pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/8 "2026-02-09T19:24:26Z")
At the moment as I wrote the player recognizes the playlist and plays the tracks according to alphabetical order of the track name!
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 7:50pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/9 "2026-02-09T19:50:25Z")
I'm still not sure if you're using a playlist in the sense that you've created a textual M3U file, either through Mp3tag or other means that is stored on your UBS stick.
Can you please double-check the contents of your USB drive and see if there is a file with the `*.m3u` extension? This file could for example be opened in your audio player on your PC and should play all the files in the desired playback order.
If there is no such file — no problem! Your car audio then simply tries to read everything from the file system and creates an internal list of files on its own. From what you're describing, it uses the track title for sorting the files across all different folders.
To include the full folder path in the track title, you can try using **Convert → Tag - Tag** for `TITLE` with
`$replace($cutleft(%_folderpath%,3),\,_) %title%`
This will strip the drive and replace all of the folder separators by an underscore. **As always, try it on a copy of your files first.**
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/10 "2026-02-09T20:02:11Z")
Yes there is an m3u file in the usb stick! Created with mp3tag sorting by path! However the player sorts by track name.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:07pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/11 "2026-02-09T20:07:32Z")
By the way the player when it reads from the file system is can everything as it is: folder, then subfolder, then tracks. It will star playing the subfolder I choose but at the end track it starts again from the first track of the subfolder, this is the problem.
I would like to play continuously, folder after folder, I had this feature in my previous car.
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:21pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/12 "2026-02-09T20:21:30Z")
The way I see it: playing by folder limits the available tracks to the files in a folder.
If that is not the desired way, it would be another approach to check if the player also interprets tag data (filenames are not really tags).
A good way would be to fill the tag fields ALBUMARTIST, ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE and TRACK.
If you could check how files behave with this metadata, it would be easier to adapt the data to make it play you want it.
See also this thread about problems with a car stereo:
> [@Need Help Saving Changed order for car USB](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/need-help-saving-changed-order-for-car-usb/61402):
>
> Hi Everyone, New to forum, first post. I have about 2000 .mp3 files that I want to put on a USB drive to play in the car. The USB in the car can support 1000 folders and 5000 files. I take that to mean 5000 per folder. I put all the files on the USB drive and opened them in MP3TAG. So far so good.I didn't want to play them in the order they were list in the directory so I used the random file tab then the auto numbering wizard. Again, so far so good. How do I save all of this so that files now p…
Or this one for different sorting options in a player (not necessarily features of your player)
> [@Car not playing in sequence from SD card](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/car-not-playing-in-sequence-from-sd-card/67116/6):
>
> This would be the ideal scenario. Unfortunately the Windows environment doesn't always behave that way. It boils down to the FAT32 table and is not dependably managed this way. Other than software like the above options resorting to a refresh of the table contents after the files have been written, the only other way is to manually manage the write order by individually copying each file one at a time, in the order you wish. It would be so much better if these basic car radio designs would at …
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:28pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/13 "2026-02-09T20:28:04Z")
All the tags are filled and the player can read them, although does not display all.
The way I see it every entry in the playlist should have a reference to the path in the usb stick, is this possible?
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:35pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/14 "2026-02-09T20:35:13Z")
The playlist is a plain text file - so it should be possible to edit it with any text editor.
Please check the playlist file whether it has a
> [@Georgva1](#):
>
> reference to the path in the usb stick
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 8:48pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/15 "2026-02-09T20:48:19Z")
Thanks, I will check.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 3:27pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/17 "2026-02-10T15:27:06Z")
This is how it looks like
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 3:37pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/18 "2026-02-10T15:37:12Z")
Thank you.
It looks like the (relative) path is included - so if the player uses that playlist and it knows how to deal with the windows style path information, then it should work.
Does it?
I would also assume that you would have to open the playlist in the player and not the folder.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 3:48pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/19 "2026-02-10T15:48:29Z")
Like I told you it plays the playlist but not in order.
However your last remark seems to the point, actually the player sees the playlist as a folder, it does not appear in the playlists category.
Maybe I should check this better.
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### Author:  [@Florian](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Florian)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 4:00pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/20 "2026-02-10T16:00:20Z")
You could try creating a minimal playlist with just a few songs from different folders and load this in your car audio. This should make it more obvious what's actually happening.
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### Author:  [@Georgva1](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Georgva1)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2026, 4:51pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/creating-playlist-for-car-audio/70659/21 "2026-02-10T16:51:14Z")
Yes, I will do this also