Because the entertainment center on my MINI isn't exactly cutting edge, playing music from my iPhone requires an expensive (and frankly, ridiculous) adapter that both supplies power and allows playback simultaneously. It wouldn't be such a pain if Apple hadn't—in their infinite wisdom, dictating how we should use our devices—gotten rid of the headphone jack a few years back. Power and signal were two separate cables that worked even in my old MINI.
The other option with this system is to play music through a USB stick. This is the method I've been using because it works and only requires copying the music files over from my Mac.
The one feature I haven't been able to figure out until recently, however, was how to get my playlists from my Mac into the MINI. A bit of internet sleuthing and an inexpensive bit of software allowed me to export the iTunes (excuse me, Apple Music) playlists to that USB stick.
Problem was, they didn't work. In fact, they weren't even recognized by the MINI. It turns out it's because the playlists are based on the file structure on my Mac—not the structure on the USB. Looking at the actual text embedded in the playlists revealed that undocumented fact, so I've spent the last several hours correcting paths on the stick to reflect where the actual files are located.*
My dance music playlists are by year, and while editing these playlist files, I discovered I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of the same songs listed in multiple years. Horror of horrors, but it should be an easy matter of sorting them out, right?
Not so fast. Back in the day I could create mix cassettes and organize the tunes by seasons. Now I'm having trouble remembering what year these tunes were in heavy rotation—never mind if it was summer or autumn.
The original mix cassettes that would've definitively nailed this down are long gone and the friends I lived through this period with are long dead, so I can't reference either of them, so I've done what any normal, aging disco queen would do: I just left the lists as they were. I mean, does it really matter if Come Into My Heart/Baby Love was getting heavy play in 1978 or 1979? With so many other things going on in the world, this is the least of my concerns and I should just sit back and enjoy the tunes and the memories—even if I can't attach them to a specific month and year any more.
*It should be noted I haven't actually tested this yet, but I can't imagine the problem being anything else.