|
Physical size of the drive doesn't matter a lot - I use a low-profile just so it's not in the way of anything else (like my wireless Android Auto dongle that's right in there alongside it). Unless it's massive, it won't get in the way of closing the arm rest.
Digital size of the drive has been covered. Honestly, you're not going to get tired of listening to only a couple GB of music. It's likely to be between 8-16 HOURS of music per GB (depends on how high the bitrate is, but for most people listening to a car stereo even 128kbps - 16 hours per GB - is indistinguishable from any other audio source.) If you're a huge audiophile AND you've upgraded the car's speakers, higher bitrates can help.
So realistically, get the smallest (both physically and storage) USB drive you can find. Only put the music you want to hear on it.
If it's properly curated the MP3 files will contain artist, album, genre, etc. Your infotainment unit will be able to look up and play music based on that information. But if there's discrepancy between some files having that data and some not, using that feature will mean you'll never hear songs that are missing that extra data.
What I do is dump all the songs that fit a mood or style - basically a "playlist" into folders that are named accordingly. So I have "Queen", "Classics", and stuff like that. (Classics being stuff I love from my teens/20's - not "Oldies" because that's what I grew up calling Oldies.) Then I can just play those folders and get stuff that's all basically similar but not necessarily called the same genre/artist/etc. in the metadata.
Another fun "problem" that you'll sometimes come across in MP3's is volume leveling. You'd see it in the older media: mix tapes. Where someone records a bunch of songs from different sources so some songs are quiet and some are loud. There are tools that auto-level entire libraries of music but I haven't kept up on that since I fixed my vast library years and years ago (just shy of 9,000 songs). I don't rip CDs anymore because I don't buy them - I just buy music digitally online and that's already properly levelled.
When you're inheriting someone else's collection there's no telling how meticulous they may have been.
If you wanna get really nuts, you can set up your music collection in a Plex server and then stream it from your phone. Heck, most people's entire music collections will fit on a decent smartphone.
|