Fairly straight forward for a non-techie like me, but pursue at your own risk.
I struggled for a few hours to get my music to show up correctly, and then I discovered a nifty app in the Mac App Store (also available for Windows and downloadable from the developer's site, mentioned below) that helped me get my music into the car, with playlist and playlist song order in tact, and without duplicating files.
Needed: Playlist Export App ($5) from the App Store; USB thumb drive; USB hub (so you can still plug your phone into the USB port in the center arm rest)
Step 1: Go to the App Store and buy this $5 app (
https://macappsto.re/us/kpn5z.m)
Step 2: Launch the app. It will scan your iTunes and recognize all your playlists.
Step 3: Click "New". This creates an export profile/template. You can use your template in place to reexport songs in the future, in case you change songs in your playlist.
Step 4:
After "New" this screen pops up, with your playlists already there.
Step 5:
Change Export Format to "M3U Extended". You can see I have already named this template Bimmerpost Demo.
Step 6:
Change Copy Settings. You have a choice, I went with Artist>Album>song (playlists still work)
Step 7:
Choose the playlists you have maintained in iTunes. It has a limitation, in that if you subdirectory playlists. In my example, I could not select playlist "A - Artist Playlists", but instead I chose "11 - Moby", and "15 - Police", etc.
Step 8:
Select Export Directory (your USB thumb drive)
Step 9:
Click "Save"
Step 10:
Then this screen pops up. Click "Export", and depending on the number of music files in the playlist, you may want grab a coffee, a beer, or go for 3-5 mile run.
The app stops when all the music is loaded. And, it places MU3 playlist files in the root directory of the thumb drive. They have to be in the root. The artist>album>song directories are read from the MU3 files.
Step 11 (optional):
Optional: add a USB hub so that you can have more than one port in your arm rest. It allows your phone to be charged, and connected, and the USB drive to supply music at the same time. Note my F15 manual says do not use the USB port for charging phones. I ignored this, as has everyone who uses it in lieu of the BMW cradle.
Step 11 (mandatory):
Plug your USB drive into the car's port. I chose a 64GB USB 3.0 (faster) drive.
Your car WILL NOT read the files and playlists at first.
It will take it a good 5 minutes from the first time you plug in, until it is fully functional. Subsequent engine restart don't matter and music become available instantaneously.
I will post in-car photos later, using the bimmeropst iPhone app, where I can take pictures on the spot. My next post will NOT Have any description, but you will see where I plugged in, and how it connects and how the files and playlists are displayed.
Also downloadable at:
http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/ for both windows and mac.