Android Auto won't play music on phone

[Chris Harrington1]

I have just changed cars and I have found following issues:
Message comes up Google Music is not currently working or
if music is running when auto starts I get no sound.
I have an active subscription
Amazon music says same thing
I have an active prime subscription
Audible works
Vlc appears in list but didn't work
Phone default music player isn't listed
Honor V10

Just want to see if anything has happened in the last month

 

[Zorbis]

I have stumbled upon a workaround if you don't mind using a UK accent for your voice assistant. For Android 7.0, go into Settings - General Management - Language and Input - Under Language, add English (United Kingdom). Once it is on the list of languages, click edit at the top right. This will allow you to change the order of preferred languages. Set UK to the top. Once you leave that settings window, your phone will slow down as your phone updates the language settings. Go back into Android Auto and you should now have the classic setting that we love.

Putting my conspiracy theory hat on tells me that this bug allows them to promote their online Music service. They have no motivation to fix a bug/feature that helps increase their customer signups. Smart developers know to be careful with features like this in the UK. It could (again theory) explain why this workaround "disables this feature".

Either way I hope they fix the problem and not the workaround, once they learn how I bypassed it.

 

[hammr25]

Said stuff

I tried your suggestion to switch the voice to the UK version and that seems to have worked. Yesterday I was trying to get it to play Bruce Hornsby and the Range - Scenes from the Southside and it wouldn't but today after the change it works fine. I don't really care if it speaks with an English accent.

If they don't fix this then my next phone will be an iPhone. Breaking features to make more money and by extension making Android Auto more dangerous is ridiculous.

Also my Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 still works fine so I assume it still uses Google Now instead of the marginally better google assistant.

 

[hammr25]

I think they've made some changes in the past few days because now I can get it to play music from my library by adding "from my library" to the end of the command.

An example would be "Play the Beatles White album from my library". It'll play my playlists without adding "from my library" to the end.

 

[asingher]

Within the Google Play Music app, which is the default audio player for Android Auto, I manage to create a playlist with local files on my S7 with connect to car audio unit. Then connect it to my Pioneer AVH-2300NEX. I was able to select play local downloaded files from the playlist or you can them My Favourites playlist. Have not tried with voice command yet.

Next part I wanted to see if I can see folder I created by Albums, if I can pick songs from there or not.

 

[asingher]

Sorry I have a typo in first response. It should say "my S7 without connected to car audio unit." I don't know if I can edit my own response, that's why I added a 2nd response.

 

[ireknole]

I tried your suggestion to switch the voice to the UK version and that seems to have worked. Yesterday I was trying to get it to play Bruce Hornsby and the Range - Scenes from the Southside and it wouldn't but today after the change it works fine. I don't really care if it speaks with an English accent.

If they don't fix this then my next phone will be an iPhone. Breaking features to make more money and by extension making Android Auto more dangerous is ridiculous.

Also my Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 still works fine so I assume it still uses Google Now instead of the marginally better google assistant.

I tried the UK language change as well, but unfortunately I had to change it back. The voice commands worked perfectly, but it also changed everything else on my phone to UK. Temperature was in celcius, google feed articles were pulled from UK sites, the dollar sign on my keyboard was changed to a pound sign. Too many little things made it a pain to keep.

Google just really needs to fix it already if they're moving forward with Android Auto. Saying "from my library" works, but gets very wordy when you specify a song and artist or album and "Google play music" that it's hard to get everything out before it thinks you're done talking.

 

[Dr Claw]

If they don't fix this then my next phone will be an iPhone. Breaking features to make more money and by extension making Android Auto more dangerous is ridiculous.

Forcing people to use voice control for anything useful music related in Android Auto to "focus on the road" is the "deleting the headphone jack" of in-car entertainment.

I read the Android Auto subreddit often to see if anyone else has had any luck. I personally use Rocket Player (because of iSyncr) in Android Auto. It's great for local music outside of AA, but in AA, it's hampered by the AA system of "no browsing, voice only, no FF/RW..."

When I try to use Google Assistant to play the music I want, it never actually plays the song. I check the Google options, and your provider options are limited to Google/YouTube Music and Spotify. I use neither of those options at present -- I just want to play what's on my phone.

As for the iPhone thing... I recently have used CarPlay and it's worlds better for podcasts and music provided you use the stock music app and the stock podcasts app. There's an A-Z scrubber, no browsing lock, fast forward/rewind, large, easy to reach controls, and you have the Siri option (which sucks, and Apple knows it sucks) just in case. Google Play music is actually a better interpretation on CarPlay than it is in the actual Google-developed app, which is sad. Spotify, however, is a little nerfed.

And in iOS12 they're getting Google Maps and Waze, which means I may have to forego using my favorite phone ever (Note 8) in favor of an iPhone because Android Auto is such crap for the non-navigation functions.

The bad news is that Apple (in some OEM implementations) has adopted some of the worst of AA (no browsing, Siri only), but not all. It definitely isn't the case in my own car.

 

[ireknole]

Forcing people to use voice control for anything useful music related in Android Auto to "focus on the road" is the "deleting the headphone jack" of in-car entertainment.

I read the Android Auto subreddit often to see if anyone else has had any luck. I personally use Rocket Player (because of iSyncr) in Android Auto. It's great for local music outside of AA, but in AA, it's hampered by the AA system of "no browsing, voice only, no FF/RW..."

When I try to use Google Assistant to play the music I want, it never actually plays the song. I check the Google options, and your provider options are limited to Google/YouTube Music and Spotify. I use neither of those options at present -- I just want to play what's on my phone.

As for the iPhone thing... I recently have used CarPlay and it's worlds better for podcasts and music provided you use the stock music app and the stock podcasts app. There's an A-Z scrubber, no browsing lock, fast forward/rewind, large, easy to reach controls, and you have the Siri option (which sucks, and Apple knows it sucks) just in case. Google Play music is actually a better interpretation on CarPlay than it is in the actual Google-developed app, which is sad. Spotify, however, is a little nerfed.

And in iOS12 they're getting Google Maps and Waze, which means I may have to forego using my favorite phone ever (Note 8) in favor of an iPhone because Android Auto is such crap for the non-navigation functions.

The bad news is that Apple (in some OEM implementations) has adopted some of the worst of AA (no browsing, Siri only), but not all. It definitely isn't the case in my own car.

I recently found an Android player that has FF/RW, it's called "jet audio". It looks like it actually has separate physical buttons mapped to those actions in the player UI, so that's why it works in AA. Just hold down the skip buttons and it'll FF/RW as you'd expect.

I agree that Android Audio is a mess right now in regards to voice commands and utility. Something I really miss from my iPod days is being able to shuffle songs and then turn off shuffle and play the songs in alphabetical order from wherever you left off on shuffle. This was useful if you had multiple versions of the same song (ex. studio, live, acoustic) and wanted to listen to a different version when it landed on one in shuffle. In AA, you can only shuffle songs and if you ask it to play a particular song, it picks a version and just plays that rather than play all versions it finds, so you have to specifically voice the song version you want and that doesn't always work.

 

[YoAssMan]

FIXED!!! At least for me...
Google Assistant is the problem, so turn it off!

Thanks Mate, I had the same problem as most before google assistant I was able to voice command my music . Looks like this problem goes way back as it only just recently happened to me. All good now android auto for music is useless if you cant use voice command due to the lack of selecting artists etc.

 

[ireknole]

Thanks Mate, I had the same problem as most before google assistant I was able to voice command my music . Looks like this problem goes way back as it only just recently happened to me. All good now android auto for music is useless if you cant use voice command due to the lack of selecting artists etc.

But when you turn off assistant nothing works. Or at least that was my experience. It forces you to have it on and updated to use AA.

 

[papy77]

There is a music/headphone button. Press it will launch your favourite AA compatible music player. That should play your local music. Google Assistant is a cloud product. Don't expect it to be able to search what's on your phone.

It did it before even was a cloud product. Being cloud does not forbid looking on your local folders.

 

[Sparkey67]

If using voice in AA to play music asks you to subscribe to YouTube Music, do the following:

Start the Google app
-Press ... Menu at lower right
--Select settings
---Select Google Assistant
----Select Services

Change default provider to Other

Now if you use a third party app ( Pulsar Plus for me ), when you ask google to "play Slipknot" it will play that artist thru your default music player in AA instead of telling you to subscribe to YouTube music.

 

[Cloggie77]

Open Google Play Music on your smart device.
Click the 3 lines in the top left corner to open the menu.
Turn ON "Downloaded Only"

This is the only change I made to my device and it worked for me. Android Auto will now play via the Google Assistant and also if I manually select the music using the touch screen.