[havinfun]

My question seems fairly fundamental, but it has baffled my dealer's BMW Genius as well as a BMW Genius at the corporate level:

I have a large library of MP3 albums ripped from CDs onto a 32 GB thumb drive (formatted as FAT32) plugged into my USB port in the center console (2018 M240i with the latest version of iDrive without Nav). When I select "shuffle" and then select a particular album, the head unit randomly plays the songs from that one album (as it should). However, if "shuffle" remains selected (a small red checkmark appears next to the shuffle icon to show it has been selected) and I then select a particular artist with many albums from my library, the head unit won't play but waits until I select one album from the artist list, and then randomly plays (shuffles) through the songs of only that one album. I cannot randomly play ALL the songs by that artist in multiple albums. Similarly, I have found no way to randomly play ALL the songs from one Genre category. By the way, pushing the Option button next to the iDrive controller brings up only one option: "Turn Off Control Display" and never "Random" as has been mentioned in another thread. So making an artist or genre selection and then pushing the Option button to get to a "random" option does not work.

Any ideas on how to shuffle through all songs of one artist or one genre???

[cxp213]

I'm not sure I'm even understanding what you're doing to cause whatever symptoms you're describing. Maybe take a short video and upload so we know what you're doing and what you're expecting but not getting?

Lastly, I don't recall ever seeing "shuffle" anywhere on my display. I have the "random" feature I can en/disable when pressing the Option button.

[havinfun]

Originally Posted by cxp213

I'm not sure I'm even understanding what you're doing to cause whatever symptoms you're describing. Maybe take a short video and upload so we know what you're doing and what you're expecting but not getting?

Lastly, I don't recall ever seeing "shuffle" anywhere on my display. I have the "random" feature I can en/disable when pressing the Option button.

Looks like the newest iDrive software has been changed. "Shuffle" apparently is the new term replacing "random". My software has NO "random" option.

To state my problem in different words: sometimes I want to listen to New Age music (one genre of several that I have set in the metadata for my albums) and sometime to Oldies (another of my genres). I would like to be able to select New Age or Oldies and then play ALL the albums in that genre randomly (i.e. "shuffle") without first creating a playlist which would be tedious given the number of albums I have ripped to the thumbdrive. However, with my iDrive software, I can select New Age or Oldies successfully and see the entire list of albums in that genre, but the head unit will only play ONE of the albums and will repeat playing the songs of that album over and over again. If "shuffle" is set to "on" (red check mark), then the head unit plays the songs of that ONE album randomly over and over again. It never moves on to play the other albums in the genre I have selected.

Here are a couple of pics of the screens which show an album selected and then the options for selecting other albums or selecting the "shuffle" option. Note the red checkmark next to "shuffle" indicating that it is selected.

Help????

[cxp213]

I understand now. That is frustrating. I wish I could help but it looks like you have the newer version -- sorry.

[havinfun]

I've been playing more with my 2018 M240 iDrive system and made the following discoveries:

1. If I select a genre from my thumbdrive albums, the default is a list of the albums in that genre (which is fine). However, there seems to be no way to play ALL the albums in order one after the other. However, an option at the top of the album list is to display ALL the songs of ALL the albums in that selected genre in alphabetical order. If I do that, the iDrive system will play ALL the songs one after the other in alphabetical order (by title). If I select the "shuffle" option (see my earlier posting), then iDrive will play ALL of the songs from the entire genre in random order.

2. If I search for a particular artist, iDrive provides a list of all albums by that artist. However, if I scroll down with the iDrive controller, the system also lists ALL of the songs by that artist from ALL of his/her albums (in alphabetical order by title). This list shows up below the album list. If I select a song from the title list, the system plays that song and all others in the list in alphabetical order. If I select "shuffle" as before, the system will play ALL of the artist's songs from ALL of the artist's albums in random order.

Basically, the above solutions solve my basic issue of playing groups of songs either within one whole genre or within all the albums of one artist without me having to create separate playlists or without having to select each album I want to listen to one at a time. The only shortcoming seems to be that there is no way of playing multiple albums in sequence. So for example, there does not appear to be a way to play all the albums by one artist in sequence with the system automatically going to the next album after finishing the last. I guess this is a minor negative.