I spent allot of time on this in my ’23 Denali and managed to get it working. The term “working” here can have different meanings. While I was initially able to get some songs to show up and play, once I discovered the system supported Playlist, I wanted that to work too.
Read through this first…
https://www.gmtruckclub.com/threads/usb-drive-issue-for-music-gmc-2022-sierra.1480736/
I joined there to post a reply but was never able to because their email verification system failed for me. Here’s what I was going to post…
———
Joined here just to share my experience now that I have it (Playlists) working. I have a 2023 Sierra. While playing via the phone works fine, I wanted the same music on a thumb drive for other reasons – but since the radio supports Playlists, I wanted that to work too. Here are the basic steps I took…
1. Created folders on the USB named for my playlist. While perhaps not necessary, I wanted the music organized this way to make it easier to update the playlist later.
2. From iTunes, selected a playlist and then selected all the songs there. Dragged them to the USB folder.
3. From iTunes, selected the playlist – File/Library/Export Playlist. I chose the .m3u8 format and saved it in the Playlist folder with the songs. For example: Country.m3u8
4. Using a text editor I edited the playlist file, changing names of the media files – because they are now on the thumb drive. Basically I removed all the path information, leaving only the filename. Presumably the radio looks in the same folder that contains the playlist for the media files.
That’s it. I think one thing that confused me initially was my impatience. While the radio will display a message about indexing something, you get no indication that it’s still in progress or done. Lots of trips back and forth between the truck and computer. I took a step back and created a few playlist with only TWO songs in each list – a total of just 6 songs. I still had to wait about 30 seconds but then the playlist appeared WITH their contents. Having established a working method, I started over and built out each playlist FULLY. Another thing I tried that may or may not have helped was switching to a different source (AM/FM…) then back to USB – thinking that might wake up the ‘re-scan’ logic.
Here’s a snippet of Country.m3u8. If you don’t have/use iTunes, you might be able to use other tools to help create the Playlist file. I used .m3u8 because one post I read somewhere else indicated that worked in their GM vehicle. Its the same content in a .m3u file so I just stuck with .m3u8 once it started working.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:146,Sounds Like Something I’d Do – Drake Milligan
Sounds Like Something I’d Do.m4a
#EXTINF:173,Amarillo By Morning – George Strait
Amarillo By Morning.mp3
In reading WAY too many posts on this topic today, several indicated that .m4a files might not be playable. In my radio, they play fine – saving me the trouble of converting them to MP3.
