Cant play music through USB iOS11

I've had this bug with previous phones. Here's the issue. You need to have at least one song stored on your phone for your car to fully recognize your phone as an audio source. So go to iTunes and download a single song to your phone. Now connect your phone to your car using USB and let the car connect to the phone. All your other audio (YouTube, Spotiy, etc) should work fine. It took me forever to figure this out.

This exactly did the trick for me. My iPhone X played fine but my mom’s 8 plus didn’t. Downloaded the music app (we’d deleted because she didn’t use it) but it still didn’t recognize her Audible books. As soon as I bought and downloaded one song everything, including Audible worked perfectly! Best $1.29 I’ve ever spent.

Buying & downloading songs did not correct my problem. Simply turning my phone completely off, then back on, corrected my my problem. I’ve had no problem since.

6. Install any firmware updates for your car stereo.

It's always good to check for updates from the car and stereo dock manufacturers when a new iOS version is released, especially since this just started after you updated to iOS 11.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Kind Regards.

I had the same issue, tried different cables, bluetooth and all. The solution I found that works like 95% of the time is simply to create a playlist and play your song out of it.

Use to work well without playlist prior to iOS 11, but now it seems that without playlist, you're bamboozed

I have an iPhone X and have the same issue. I have a 2009 Kia that has a special cord to play through the car stereo. Apple tried to tell me it was a cord, so I tried another and had the same problem. Here’s the only (very frustrating) way I can get it to work:

1. Set stereo to AUX and make sure it shows “connected”.

2. Open a podcast and push play

3. Plug in cord to connect to stereo (sometimes this takes a few tries).

4. Once the podcast starts to play, then switch to music.

It’s the stupidest thing ever!! It works for me to switch between the two but it has to be a specific order to it for it to work and it’s a giant pain.

xzibit_007, I had the same issue. On this thread, someone suggested going to Settings/General/Reset All. This worked for me.

I have two vehicles that I play music through the USB: one has an aftermarket Kenwood and one is the stock stereo in a Hyundai Santa Fe. When music wouldn't play through either, I knew it was the phone and not the stereos.

No need to "Upgrade firmware" on your stereo or other devices. Just make sure you select "Reset All Settings," not "Erase All Settings."

Good luck.

I couldn’t get my 6 to connect to my car via cord or anything. I tried everything in the world then I read here to download a song on iTunes. I downloaded one 69 cent song and now everything works...

Silly question I know, but have you saved any song to you music app- even if it was just off a cd you imported? If so, then I’m out of ideas. I know for me I had to download the song before it worked- purchasing wasn’t enough.

Hello. I was able to resolve this issue by plugging my phone in. Getting the unable to read message. I downloaded a song from the search option into my library. Unplugged and plugged my device back in and it solve the issue. I hope this helps!

You are right. That’s what I did - Downloaded at least one somg and Apple Music started to play through the usb cable in my car!

Geniuse!

I know that this is an older thread but I wanted to say that adding a song to my iPhone 5s with iOS 11.3 from iTunes fixed the issue I was having. I have a JVC KW-HDR720 unit in my vehicle and, after an iPhone update awhile back, it stopped displaying the song information when playing from iPhones. When any iPhone was connected it would flash "Cannot Play" on the display, even though music was actually playing. Once I added a song to my iPhone the song information started being displayed again. Great job to SaNdSuKkA for figuring this out and posting the fix.

I am having the same issue.. bye bye iphone.. Always been team apple but iOS 11 is absolutely useless. I'm beyond fed up, put in 3 complaints already. Phone freezing, no USB/Bluetooth in my car, no night shift, control center *****, lock screen is impossible.. Enough is enough. My battery doesn't even last for half a day now!

Hi everyone,

I had this exact same problem with my iPhone 6s after updating to 11.1.1. When I plugged my phone through USB, My Fiat 500 would show the song playing on the radio screen, time to go and everything but I got no sound.

Then suddenly, after many tryouts during a period of about two weeks, everything went back to normal... I never got any update on the phone or, that I know of, in the car.