years ago I had a Ford for a company car, I was able to get Sync to recognize a bog standard thumb drive with MP3s on it. I have my whole CD collection ripped to FLAC for my home DLNA server so it was a semi-trivial exercise to use Foobar2000 to convert them to 320 MBPS MP3s although please don't ask me for a step by step because it's been years since I've done this.
I do remember there was something different about the way the file names had to be formatted for Sync than literally everything else I used (Twonky, Kodi, various clients, the ICE in my '09 BMW, etc.) I want to say the track numbers needed to be three digits for Sync to work correctly but a) I am not 100% sure of that b) I don't know if that will still be the case as this was probably 10 years ago and c) again, please don't ask me how I accomplished this, if I just added a leading zero somehow in the Foobar conversion process or did something else. for example:
02 Paranoid.flac on my home DLNA server would be converted to
002 Paranoid.mp3 for Sync. I *think*...
I had a whole file structure to make this work correctly, and using it correctly and also getting the metadata tags right were both important because you never knew if a given device was going to sort by the file structure, the metadata, or a combination of both. My file structure in the example above would look something like this
D:\music\Black Sabbath\1970 - Paranoid [1987]\02 Paranoid.flac
(I baked the year of release into the folder name because I wanted my albums organized by artist and then chronologically. the 1987 is because I used a 1987 CD release to make the files, obviously CDs didn't exist in 1970. I started manually putting the label and catalog number in one of the metadata fields a while back but I have not had enough free time to go back and "fix" all of my older rips...)
I use Exact Audio Copy to make my FLAC rips which isn't exactly user friendly, but is relatively easy to use *once you get it set up the way you like it*
Of course, now with cell phone data speeds being what they are, and an unlimited data plan, it's easier now to just use Qobuz or similar to stream music in the car. I recently had a period where all of my vehicles were either wrecked or broken and had to rent a new Malibu which has Android Auto built in. Took not long at all to get it to recognize my cell phone and I have to admit it was pretty slick. Whereas my 14 year old BMW will allow me to make and receive phone calls, the Malibu would let me run apps right on the car's screen, no phone holder required. So, with little effort I had it so that when my personal cell connected the car would automatically start Waze, and I could also stream from Qobuz at the same time if I got sick of whatever was on the radio. The only thing that was less than optimal about that car was that its built in wireless charger was a slot behind the shifter, not a pad, and it did not play nice with my phone - it was too narrow to fit my phone with the protective case on, and even if I took the case off it wasn't deep enough to hit the sweet spot, so it just didn't work. So I had to act like a caveman and use a lighter plug with an actual USB cord to keep my phone charged in the car! Take note Chevy, a pad is the way to go. So anyway with Android Auto now my huge pile of rips is somewhat useless... now the big problem is my cell phone does not have a headphone jack nor does my old (2002) GTI have an aux in connection so I have no way of streaming when I'm driving that car! It does have the CD player you're missing as well as a "cassette deck" - remember those? (yeah, I should probably replace the head unit in that one, but I am trying not to spend a lot of money...)
Edit: just in case OP tries it, I cannot remember now if it was the actual filename or the track number field where I needed three digits with leading zero(s) and don't really have a way to test, not having any handy friends with newish Fords. I know it was one or the other though.
