2016.5 CX-5 GT - Infotainment doesnt show correct Artist/Album/Song info !!!

Hello everyone!

I am a new CX-5 owner, and new member of the forums. I come to you guys in need of your expertise

So far, i LOVE the car . . . except for this one issue. The infotainment system in this car is TRASH. The bluetooth connectivity of the car is absolute trash. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Sometimes it lags. Somtimes it stutters. sometimes it reboots, sometimes the screen just mysteriously goes black. When it "lags", that drives me absolutely insane - what is going on with this thing to cause a 1 second delay with every single input i give on the command knob. Does the software of this thing actually suck that much?

Anyways i was willing to overlook the issues above, but, mine has recently taken on an all new problem, and if i cant resolve, i have to take this car in to the dealer because this drives me crazy. This problem started when i tried to connect my old Note 4 (i have 2), and see if it would work with a t-mobile note 4. (i have a verizon note 4, and a tmobile note 4). It hasnt been the same since.

The problem is: The infotainment will play songs via bluetooth, but the artist/album meta data is wrong on the screen.

Things ive tried:

I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the bluetooth link to the phone 3 times now, and it is a painful process and requires alot of patience for something that is very simple.

I have tried re-formatting the phone.

I have tried just waiting for 10-20 minutes to see if the problem goes away or it loads all the folders into memory. doesnt fix

I have tried using different media apps on phone. doesnt fix it



Please please help!! Anyone know what i can do? Thank you in advance!

Update your firmware

ok, i suppose that is on the list of things to do to try and remedy. I was wondering if maybe its a phone problem. Becuase i notice that samsung deleted its default app (music player) and replaced it with something new (Samsung Music). Is it possible that is the problem?

I guess i just dont understand why the infotainment display correctly shows the artist/song Meta for 6 months, and for no reason it just stops working

I’ve had my 16.5 since March. I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. The infotainment system is ridiculously poor, so much so that I’m going to get rid of this vehicle soon. Bluetooth is very weak and intermittent, sometimes Pandora will play, sometimes not, etc. And who came up with the brilliant decision that an off switch wasn’t necessary? Mazda should be embarrassed.

If it's any consolation the latest Gracenote info is available to download which might sort out missing artist/album information. http://infotainment.mazdahandsfree.com/howto-updategracenote?language=en-NA

Your original problem sounds like a warranty issue to me.
The bluetooth on my 17 works great, no complaints.

I have 3 Mazdas with this lousy MID software.
My earliest one is '14 Mazda3.
The newest version v.59 is much better.
However, try to wait till the software finishes booting before start to move (or shift into gear).
Over the years, I found that whenever I saw issues with the software, I was in a rush to go.
If I wait for it to finish booting, it works 99% of the time.
From personal experience.

It happened to me on my '17 for the 1st time. I was in a rush to go pick up someone.
It did not happen for the past 2 months since I bought it. 1st one something bad happened (screen was frozen).

NM1975 said:

ok, i suppose that is on the list of things to do to try and remedy. I was wondering if maybe its a phone problem. Becuase i notice that samsung deleted its default app (music player) and replaced it with something new (Samsung Music). Is it possible that is the problem?

I guess i just dont understand why the infotainment display correctly shows the artist/song Meta for 6 months, and for no reason it just stops working

Click to expand...

In that case, it sounds like it is your phone. Why are you complaining about the infotainment unit when your phone apparently has the issue?

Retired said:

I’ve had my 16.5 since March. I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. The infotainment system is ridiculously poor, so much so that I’m going to get rid of this vehicle soon. Bluetooth is very weak and intermittent, sometimes Pandora will play, sometimes not, etc. And who came up with the brilliant decision that an off switch wasn’t necessary? Mazda should be embarrassed.

Click to expand...

The bluetooth works great. Sounds like your phone has an issue.

Assuming you have the latest head unit firmware... the thing that changes most is, in declining order:

- Apps on the phone are often buggy. Pandora and most audio apps are pretty notorious.
- The phone's OS. Apple updates often break things, across all car models. They get reports and fix it eventually...
- Bad phone Bluetooth/USB drivers and firmware. Usually these are pretty good and you don't need to worry about them.

Make sure all of these are up to date.

Jonno21 said:

If it's any consolation the latest Gracenote info is available to download which might sort out missing artist/album information. http://infotainment.mazdahandsfree.com/howto-updategracenote?language=en-NA

Click to expand...

This! Gracenote is what controls the song information displayed, not the system update. As Junno said there is a new one available (and it is large, took about 20 minutes to load onto my CX-9), so load that and then see where things are. There will likely still be errors, but they should be reduced.

craigo said:

The bluetooth works great. Sounds like your phone has an issue.

Assuming you have the latest head unit firmware... the thing that changes most is, in declining order:

- Apps on the phone are often buggy. Pandora and most audio apps are pretty notorious.
- The phone's OS. Apple updates often break things, across all car models. They get reports and fix it eventually...
- Bad phone Bluetooth/USB drivers and firmware. Usually these are pretty good and you don't need to worry about them.

Make sure all of these are up to date.

Click to expand...

craigo, I appreciate your input, but I have to respectfully disagree that the BT works great, because in my CX-5, it doesn't.
I checked, and I have v59, which I believe is the latest version. I'll be taking my vehicle to the dealership this morning for the 20K service, so I'm going to ask them about it.
BT has a range of about 30 ft., yet I almost always have to remember to take my phone out of my pocket and place it in the slot in the console if I want a good connection to the unit. Otherwise I get the message that says something about error connecting to mobile device.
When I say intermittent, I'm not even talking about from one day to the next. I can be out running errands, and connecting/reconnecting works fine, and then I get back in the vehicle one more time and it doesn't connect.
I agree that on rare occasions a software update on the phone can have a bug, but I just don't believe that is a problem because I've had several update to my phone since I bought the CX-5 and the problems have been consistent through all of them.

Retired said:

craigo, I appreciate your input, but I have to respectfully disagree that the BT works great, because in my CX-5, it doesn't.
I checked, and I have v59, which I believe is the latest version. I'll be taking my vehicle to the dealership this morning for the 20K service, so I'm going to ask them about it.
BT has a range of about 30 ft., yet I almost always have to remember to take my phone out of my pocket and place it in the slot in the console if I want a good connection to the unit. Otherwise I get the message that says something about error connecting to mobile device.
When I say intermittent, I'm not even talking about from one day to the next. I can be out running errands, and connecting/reconnecting works fine, and then I get back in the vehicle one more time and it doesn't connect.
I agree that on rare occasions a software update on the phone can have a bug, but I just don't believe that is a problem because I've had several update to my phone since I bought the CX-5 and the problems have been consistent through all of them.

Click to expand...

Try deleting and repairing the BT connection on both phone and head unit. Conduct a hard reboot of the phone. If it's an Apple device, sometimes resetting network settings helps. If you're on Android... google for your particular device and flavor.

Most people have few to no issues with the head unit's BT. The only time I have a reset of the phone and/or a re-pairing fixed it. Anything is possible - if the head unit has a bad BT antenna for example. Hopefully the dealer can sort that out, but that is very rare.

Got a firmware update (v59.00.502) today at the 20K service. I'll see if that makes a difference. I will also try deleting and repairing the connection as you suggested.

How do i check my firmware, please?


I had an interesting change to my problem. I changed my music player on my phone from [samsung music] to [poweramp]. So now instead of it showing the wrong ID3 tag info, now it WILL show the correct tag info (artist/song), but i can not navigate to the root menu to select any albums or songs. It just shows my phone name, but when i click that, nothing happens. LOL. So i traded one problem for another i guess.

If anyone out there is having this issue, try poweramp on your phone, its a great player and has nice library feature, graphics. The only catch is you have to navigate through your songs on your phone, and not the command knob, which was a huge selling feature to me. Oh well, ill probably rear end someone in traffic while looking down at my phone to pick out a song to play.

So, now im 75% convinced its more of a compatibility problem, and not a car defect or malfunction. it just has something to do with the handshake between the two bluetooth devices.

Anyone have any other input or fixes on this issue i would greatly appreciate. thanks to all!