iCloud and USB problems?

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iCloud and USB problems?

I have a USB speaker dock which should allow me to play music from my iPhone when connected. Indeed it does with everyone's phones but mine. Even people with exactly the same phone models. So I'm wondering where the issue lies. I did get both my phones to play through it briefly after several connects, reconnects, and turning everything off an on again. But now I've got nothing again.

The only common theme in all of this is iCloud. I'm synced with iCloud, but I've downloaded the music from Apple to my phones so they play even when I'm offline. Which they do...until I connect the phones to the USB dock. The phones recognize the dock and stop playing music through the phone speakers, but transmit nothing through the dock.

Any clues?

Posted on Jun 24, 2022 11:29 AM

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Catalanky Author

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Jun 26, 2022 4:44 PM in response to Catalanky

Answering my own question here, but maybe it will help others who are having similar trouble. The 'speaker dock' I am referring to in this case is actually a car stereo. A Fiat 500e radio to be precise. The solution may help with other units though. It's certainly an interesting phenomena...

The problem seems to have to do with the peculiarities of Apple Music information architecture.

Basically, my entire music library is built on Playlists from an Apple subscription. Every single track within those Playlists is downloaded to my iPhone so I can play them all offline, BUT...the car stereo will not recognize the iPhone until at least one track has been individually downloaded into the Apple Music library called SONGS. I don't know why, but as soon as I did that, every single one of my Playlists became available through the car stereo (even though none of the Playlist tracks are in the SONGS library). When I take the individual track out of the library, the car stereo reverts to not recognizing the iPhone as having any playable tracks again.

Downloaded tracks are obviously kept in different places on the iPhone. The Apple Music Songs library must be the first port of call for a USB music transfer. If there's nothing in there, my 'dock' doesn't look anywhere else.

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iCloud and USB problems?

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