I have a 2011 M3 and also a 2011 550XI and in both of them my CD player cannot detect the album name, artist name or song titles on brand new cds purchased from Walmart. I tried 3 different cd and none of them were detected, just came up unknown artist and unknown song titles. When I put the cds in my computer, itunes detects it and imports with the titles/names. Is anyone else having this problem? Any solutions.
Have it checked by the dealer. Bring those CD's with you. See if other cars of the same model read them. That's what warranties are for. Shouldn't cost you a cent to fix - since defects in workmanship are covered by the warranty. Does it do the same thing with all of your other CD's?
Do you own any CD from which the car can display this information? The vast majority of CDs do not encode metadata (artist, album, songs, etc.) on the CD itself. Computer applications download this information over the Internet, from public/proprietary databases indexed by the CD's disc ID (a nearly-unique ID number calculated from the disc's track timing). Unless the car has an Internet connection and software to support the process, it cannot to do the same. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB) That said, some CDs do encode metadata in the CD-Text format. Many late-model BMWs are able to read and display this information. Unfortunately it's usually not possible to determine before purchase whether a CD contains CD-Text data. Many do, but not all.
I own over 1000 CD's. Only a few of the latest have metadata. For instance, REM's Live at the Olympia does. Sara McLachlan's Laws of Illusion, Dave Matthew's Band Big Whiskey, and U2's No Line do not. REM is on Warner Bros., might matter depending upon label/company.
