The Best iTunes Alternative for Offline Music in Chrome OS
Looking back at my teenage years, some of my best memories were those of the times I had my iPod. As a cultural classic, it’s a statement maker and I had the privilege of owning varying models up until the last iPod Touch 7 of 2015.
It’d be an understatement to say Apple was a force to reckon with right after the onslaught of digital music at the beginning of the century as Apple was at the forefront of that progress.
The iPod was vital to the success and adoption of this medium of music and iTunes (which so happens to primary to the functionality of the iPod) was instrumental to the success of Apple’s digital music effort and ultimately the iPod line.
Undoubtedly, the iTunes app/service has grown to be much more than a music player by being a one-stop shop for all forms of digital media and effectively bridging the gap between them. But perhaps more importantly, a syncing feature that seamlessly interfaces with Apple’s varying line of iDevices.
You’d be hard-pressed to come across the same robust all-around music service on competing platforms and this is partially due to the prevalence of online digital music. However, if you’re like me and still appreciate offline music, then you might want to consider the music player I’ve elaborated upon below.
Rocket Player
Developed by JRT Studio and ranked as one of the top music players on the Google Play Store with a 4.3 rating by over 300,000 users, it is rather surprising that it’s not as mainstream as it deserves to be, in my opinion. Having been a pro user of the service for the past three years, I can attest to its robust feature set which include the following:
- Display by song, album artist, album, artist, playlist, composer, genre
- 10 Band graphic equalizer
- 30+ themes
- Embedded lyrics
- Tag editing
- Play many formats (
wav ,ogg , mp3, 3gp, mp4, m4a,alac ,tta , ape,mpc ,wav ,flac ,wv and wma ) - Batch selection – for selecting multiple songs at once to add to playlist, eq
- Custom
lockscreen - Sleep
timer - Podcast bookmarks
- Scrobbling support
- Chromecast support
- Android Auto support
Perhaps, more importantly, is the optional add on of a complimentary service called iSyncr which has an Android app and desktop client that enables it to interface with the iTunes service on your Windows or Mac computer in order to synchronize your offline Music library to your Android device.
Essentially, the iSyncr app does all the heavy lifting of metadata syncing to and fro the iTunes app with the Rocket player app ultimately set for playback at the end of the every sync session. iSyncr supports the synchronization of ratings, play counts, playlist changes, ability to sync embedded lyrics, just to name a few.
Furthermore, the whole Rocket player experience isn’t complete without the addon of the cloud plugin which has a yearly subscription of a dollar and enables features such as album art downloading, artist pictures, playlist backup and restore between devices, and auto tag editing.
Setting up Rocket Player on your Chromebook
Visit JRT Studio app list on the Play Store to download the appropriate apps, such as the Rocket player, iSyncr and the Cloud sync app (if you’d like)on your chrome device. I should mention that most of the benefits of using the feature-set of the Rocket Player and iSyncr combo are maximized when you go for the pro version which comes in at the price of $3.49. This pro license also gives you access to the plethora of themes available to it.
First off, you’ll need a second system that runs either Windows or Mac with iTunes already installed and your offline music library available. Then proceed to the JRT Studio website to download the appropriate iSyncr desktop client for your second system after which you’ll install it with the default installation configuration.
After completing this process, the iSyncr Windows/Mac client will automatically interface with the iTunes app and library, therefore you need not worry about anything beyond installing the client. However, in order for you to properly synchronize your audio library from your secondary system to your Chromebook, you’d have to ensure that they are both connected to the same wireless network.
iSyncr playlist items 
iSyncr library selection 
iSyncr network type 
Rocket player music thumbnail 
Rocket player music list
Now head back to your Chromebook and fire up the iSyncr app, select WiFi and if you’ve done everything correctly, you should see your iTunes music library on your secondary system pop up. Select the library and you’ll see the playlists/playlist folders you created on your secondary system. Select the ones you’d like to sync over to your Chromebook and voila!
The total sync duration will be dependent on your internet connection speed and the number of items that are being synced. Your music library will be available for playback in your Rocket Music app once synchronization is complete. You’ll also be glad to know that
And That, folks, concludes the process of setting up Rocket Player in Chrome OS. The other options available to the platform are mostly Linux-centric and rather counter-intuitive in their usability. There’s also the added obstacle of the fact that the Linux file system is isolated from the rest of the Chrome OS file system. We, however, do have two different guides that will help bridge this gap within the Chrome OS file system. One is our Insync installation procedure and the other our selection of the top alternative Linux-centric file managers for Chrome OS.
