How to play music via Bluetooth in Mercedes from 2011?

Question

I have a Mercedes A180 from 2011 (W169). It only supports connecting the phone via Bluetooth for the purpose of calls. I, however, want to play music via Bluetooth.

I found a similar question regarding some other car and apparently it is not at all possible. However, besides not being sure if that also applies to my car, I think that the answer in the linked question was not detailed enough because I am left wondering how is it then possible that Google Maps can "imitate" the phone call according to the question (I personally haven't found this option in Google Maps) and if this could further be exploited to force the car to also play music via Bluetooth.

I am also left wondering why are these different profiles necessary at all. I noticed that if I click on some buttons on the phone when there is an active call and the phone is connected to the car via bluetooth, I will hear these clicks from the car speakers. Thus it does not seem that the Bluetooth connection only transmits call data; it is obviously also possible to transmit other sounds. This makes me confused about cars not having the 'required profile' to do something, when they obviously can. Are they just intentionally blocked from doing so?

Using the Bluetooth adapter for aux is not an option for me; I already have it, but the aux port is in the glove box and it is extremely inconvenient to have to open the glove box every single time I enter the car, then look around with my fingers for the power button on the adapter etc. Currently I am using aux cables, but they get broken quite quickly because I close the glove box and this damages the cable from inside. At this point it is becoming too costly to replace aux cables.

Answer 1

If your audio system is a "Command" you should be able to get a BT module similar to this that wires in with connections to the car's own 12v feed (so no mucking around turning adaptors off and on). Any halfway competent auto-electrician or car stereo installer should have no difficult fitting it if your lairy of digging around the wiring harness yourself.

I'm fairly sure doing this replaces your existing AUX connection so that would give you BT audio instead of the AUX jack - but I'm not certain on that.

NB: HFP (the Bluetooth profile used for phone connections to cars) typically has pretty poor audio for things that aren't voice. I'm not sure off the top of my head which version the Merc will support but if it's HFP 1.6 you get a single channel (so monoaural) of 16khz audio, if it's 1.5 or earlier it's even worse (8khz) so if you did somehow manage to convince your phone to output audio through the "phone" connection the end result is going to sound pretty terrible. The reason things like maps have been able to get around this is because they're relaying simple vocal instructions not music so it doesn't really matter.