Chromebooks are not what they once used to be. Nevertheless, they can pull off a wide variety of tasks and accommodate different types of users. The thanks here go to the constant development of Chrome OS as a sleek, speed- and security-oriented operating system that prioritizes simplicity above everything else. As a result, you can file taxes, install other operating systems like Linux and CloudReady, and even run WordPress on a Chromebook. Entertainment-wise, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are readily available on these slick devices from the evergreen Google Play Store, among other top-tier programs like Crunchyroll.
- Are you interested in buffing your Chromebook with the best apps around? Then, check out the top 20 Google Play Store applications to do just that.
That said, audiophiles who are looking for a high-quality music player for their Chromebooks are also in for a treat. Apart from SoundCloud and Spotify, there’s a wide assortment of music players around that you can use on Chrome OS. However, not all of them are worth the time or the effort, so it’s best that you know which ones to opt for when it boils down to it.
Therefore, we’ve lined up our top picks in this article to get your system jazzing with the best beats around. We’ll be leaving a fairly descriptive description below each entry, so you can acknowledge what features they’re packing. So without any further ado then, let’s jump right in.
10 of the best music players for Chromebook
1. VLC Media Player
Starting off this list is the undisputed king of music and media players out there. The VLC Media Player has been long-standing a formidable software for tending to the media requirements of people all across the world. It’s free, supports a comprehensive variety of formats, and boasts advanced features like volume amplification beyond 100%.
The user interface is outright minimalistic, so even the most casual of users out there will have no trouble using this application. It’s also ad-free, so no wasting time canceling annoying adverts that pop up on the screen unwarranted.
In addition, it comes fully optimized for Chrome OS, so speed and performance aren’t going to be an issue worth complaining about. Finally, you can install VLC Media Player on your Chromebook in different ways, all of which are discussed here in this guide.
We suggest opting for the Linux route as it’s much more refined and polished than other installation methods. Another feature to talk about is the inclusion of plugins in VLC. These let you modify the user experience and tailor it towards your liking.
You can also integrate the application with other platforms to form a full-fledged network. You definitely cannot go wrong with this music player, so fire it up right away and let us know how it goes. If you’re looking to download this quickly, go to the Google Play Store using this link.
2. Subsonic Music Streamer
Subsonic Music Streamer is an incredibly lightweight music player whose file size is even lesser than a single MB. The app can be easily downloaded from the Google Play Store for free, and there are no hidden costs. It’s going to serve you as a reliable music streamer consistently without having to look for other options if your requirements are relatively basic.
Like VLC Media Player, it also supports various audio file formats, such as MP3, OGG, AAC, FLAC, and WMA, so you’re never stuck trying to convert to a specific format that a player can work with.
In addition, the songs you play are cached for offline use. Other noteworthy features include adaptive bitrates, an equalizer, and a visualizer to improve user experience. As for the interface, we’re talking about running an exceptionally humble music player that’s far away from anything complex.
It’s effortless to browse your library in it and find your favorite music. Furthermore, you can also boot the application into a dedicated offline mode, so it doesn’t involve the pre-installed audio tracks that you probably don’t want to bother with.
3. Spotify
Spotify is arguably the undisputed king of all music players in the world. It’s extremely popular with more than 180 million paid subscribers and is one of the best music streaming platforms, especially for audiophiles. The application has its music collection, but we have decided to include it in this list because you can also play music from your local storage on Spotify.
You won’t be struggling with using it in any way as the interface is relatively modern and easy to understand. The application has more than 1 billion downloads on the Google Play Store, with a 4.4/5.0 overall rating when writing this article. It works offline with music and can create a full-fledged library within.
Doing so will make it seamless to pick out your favorites from the bunch and curate our very won collection. Lastly, it has several features to brag about, including playback speed control, a timer, and the ability to upgrade to a premium-grade plan that increases audio quality takes away the advertisements and gives you unlimited skips for listening to music that’s not on your local storage.
The best part is that Spotify can be used on Chrome OS in three different ways, all of which are commendable. You can download it as a Google Play Store application, install it from Linux, or rock the web-based version without breaking a sweat. All of that, including the download link for the app on the Play Store, is covered in this guide article, so do check it out for step-by-step information.
4. Enjoy Music Player
Enjoy Music Player is another top-tier music player that one can readily install on their Chromebook. It’s readily available from the Chrome Web Store and is downloaded as an extension for minimal cluttering and space utilization.
It can be used to play both offline and online music, not to mention the slew of other features that the user experience from one level to the next. There’s a music equalizer and a fade-in/fade-out feature, too, along with a mini mode for multitasking potential.
Its offline mode connects with your Chromebook’s local storage, while the online way is powered by SoundCloud, which is yet another limitless repository of all things audio tracks. We fare the user interface of the Enjoy Music Player as highly intriguing.
It’s loaded with catchy elements and a desirable design with speedy performance. Another trait worth mentioning is the integration of Google Drive, meaning that you can import your music directly from that established cloud-based storage and dive in on the fun uninterruptedly.
- Speaking of which, you should take a look at these top 5 cloud storage solutions for maximizing the potential of Chrome OS.
The Enjoy Music Player is easily the best option you have for streaming music on the go without breaking a sweat on Chrome OS. Get it today from the Chrome Web Store.
5. Until AM for Chrome
With over 200,000 users and more than 4,500 global ratings, Until AM for Chrome is a high-quality music player with a horde of extra features compared to a regular music player application.
It offers a full-blown DJ environment with functionality like vinyl scratching, playback speed modification, and sound adjustment, all within a lightweight application. Speaking of which, the total file size is somewhere around 1.04 mebibytes, where 1 mebibyte is equal to 1.04 megabytes.
Additionally, the application boasts direct integration with SoundCloud, where you can explore music boundlessly and even download MP3 songs from other platforms. The best part is that you can also connect with Google Drive on Until AM for Chrome, similar to how users do in Enjoy Music Player.
What’s more, while you play and listen to songs, you can search and pre-load more online. Lastly, we presume you can load songs from your local storage onto the interface of Until AM and enjoy them smoothly. A steady and undisturbed experience awaits you in this music player, so get it right now from the Chrome Web Store.
6. jetAudio HD Music Player
“jetAudio HD Music Player” is another quality pick celebrated highly on the Google Play Store. It has scored more than 10 million downloads on the platform with a 4.3/5.0 overall rating. It’s a lightweight music player that gets the job done without forcing you to pay or do anything of the like.
The app can stream music from any folder on the Chromebook’s local storage. In addition, it supports multiple different formats, including WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, M4A, MPC, and even TTA. Of course, there’s a lot more where that came from as well, should you want to put the program to its paces.
We iterated earlier that you don’t have to pay to use the basic features of “JetAudio,” but if you want to get a taste of premium-grade features, you can consider upgrading to the Plus version. This application variant involves all the essential features but a slew of advanced ones.
First off, it takes out all the advertisements from within the app’s interface and gives you a 20-band graphics equalizer compared to the basic version’s 10-band one. You can download the application from the Google Play Store today.
7. Audiotool
Audiotool is much more than a regular music player. It’s precisely what its name depicts it is. It means serious business for those looking to create their music with features like drum machines, in-built sound synthesizers, and general effects.
DAW is an acronym that stands for Digital Audio Workstation, and the developers refer to Auditool as no less than a DAW. It’s even loaded with utilities like the splitter, merger, crossfader, and audio track for sorting and arranging your edits.
Audiotool also sports a publishing platform where you can share your created music with the rest of the world and possibly market it down the road. Advanced effects like stereo enhancer, tube distortion, slope, reverb, pitch delay, and phaser are all components of a DAW, and Audiotool is out here packing all this functionality as a simple Chrome Web Store extension.
Waste no time in setting this little magician of an application up and trying it on your Chromebook today. Use this direct link to get straight to the official application page and download it today.
8. AIMP
We’re forwarding this list with one more top-end music player called AIMP. Decorating this application is the number of downloads on the Google Play Store, which has now crossed the 10-million mark with a stellar 4.5/5.0 overall rating.
It won’t bog down your system like most unoptimized music players do and manage to dish out decent performance on a day-to-day basis. However, the interface that AIMP offers is old-school, so don’t expect anything modern in this regard.
You can organize your playlists just the way you want and even apply different skins to the GUI of the application. In addition, there’s automatic detection for tags encoding and a 20-band graphic equalizer.
In retrospect, this is a premium feature available on music players that come for a cost. You’re getting it for free on AIMP, so there’s that. As for the playback, you can optimize the speed control and balance it at will.
People dropping reviews for this application on the Google Play Store say they love the theme customization feature. You can switch up the theme of the app with light, black, and dark themes and enjoy the support of night and day mode.
If you generally use earphones with your Chromebook, AIMP also features the ability to change tracks through the volume buttons. You can also utilize a lot on this music player, such as grouping files in a template, searching files in filtering mode, and sharing audio files.
Those looking for a simplified user experience will love what AIMP has to offer. Better try it out straight away using this direct link for the Google Play Store.
9. NRG Player
NRG is the last entry on this list, but it doesn’t come without a bang. The player makes short work of boring music streamers with nothing but hum-drum functionality. It’s well-received on the Google Play Store with over 10 million downloads and 167,000 reviews, with the vast majority of them being flat-out positive.
It welcomes most audio formats and even lets you listen to music offline. This opens up the program anytime and lets you put on music without breaking a sweat. As for the functionality, there’s a powerful equalizer, song lyrics to sing along with, and a quality user interface that’s teeming with exciting visuals and enjoyable design elements.
If you find yourself with a habit of sleeping through music but also need the player to turn off after you’ve dozed off, the NRG player has just the feature for you. It includes a built-in timer that needs to be turned on first but effectively makes the player switch itself off after a considerable time has passed with zero activity. This makes the whole affair seamless and trouble-free for others around you who might get disturbed by the sound of your music playing.
Lastly, this music player is quite big on customization features. It lets you optimize the interface’s design elements, making it possible to switch up the look and feel of the player. This includes the player’s colors, the background, and even skins that reinvigorate the interface as a whole. Some users love it when they can adjust the music player according to their preferences, and if you’re one of them, you’ll commend the NRG player.
Use this direct link to get straight to the official Google Play Store page to download it.
10. Remo Music Player
The Remo Music Player is the last entry on this list that can allow you to listen to music on your Chromebook in a highly stylized manner. It features an equalizer for tweaking the parameters of the music to your heart’s content, and if you manage to find the lyrics of the songs you play, you’ll be reading them painlessly with Remo’s auto-scroll feature. You also have multiple keyboard shortcuts to streamline the process for you.
For instance, the “P” or the spacebar is meant for pausing or playing music, the “Up” or “Right” arrow key is for playing the next music, and the “Down” or “Left” arrow key is for playing the previous music. To make things even simpler, you can drag-and-drop files and folders into Remo Music Player’s interface to get them to work instantly.
The application is also exceptionally lightweight, about 2 MB more or less. This makes it run smoothly even on low-end devices, so your experience is never hindered. Lastly, you can also create playlists within the player to collect your music. Many people have tried Remo out, and they all commend the program for its efficacy. You can try it yourself, too, using this direct link for the official Chrome Web Store page of Remo Music Player.
Conclusion
Users who have Chrome OS as their daily driving, operating system have pumped it full of functionality due to the Google Play Store and Linux options. There’s a lot you can do with a modern-day Chromebook, like programming and installing different code editors if you’re an aspiring developer.
For dwellers of the music industry, we have compiled this list of the ten best music players that you can access easily on your device and get to streaming music without breaking a sweat. We advise trying out each of them if you can’t decide on a single one. Our top pick out of the bunch is VLC Media Player, whose performance is unmatched on Chrome OS. That said, we hope you’ve found what you were looking for in this article. As always, Chrome Ready wishes you good luck!
9 comments
I’m sorry but I find playing my music on my Chromebook to be a real pain in the ass.
I like the Chromebook concept that I started to look at back in 2009, but until it comes with USABLE apps to do basic things like CONTINUE to listen to my music, it’s not gonna cut it.
I’m an experienced IT professional, but nothing makes sense here. Simply opening my music folder on an SD card is complicated! Then how do I find and select what I want to listen to?
You show an attractive view of VLC as a media player, but where can I find this kind of view? How much time do I have to invest finding out the cool stuff? I don’t have time to mess around. I want something that works out of the box. Not to mention people I could try and convince to move to Chromebook. But like linux, it’s cumbersome and way too geeky!
For me, it is rather frustrating!
12 years down and it’s not a finished product…
After a few weeks of enthusiasm, I’m finding the issues are still way too much for general public adoption.
I had a similar experience. I tried to use VLC on a Chromebook with an external drive, and the Chromebook kept losing connection with the drive, so I would have to frequently reconnect the drive and rescan to see the files. Major pain. I switched to an inexpensive LInux laptop and it works fine now.
great app
Ara there any of these apps that can be controlled from an Android phone? VLC has a remote app for phones but the developer told me it is not useable with Linux vlc in a Chromebook terminal. My attempts to do so confirm that. iTunes has several remote apps but you have to run it in a Windows shell, which is too slow.
I have a chromebook and its a struggle just to listen to music
Spotify was blocked on my Chromebook somehow because people controlled what I look at on the computer
It is a misión to play music in the fckng ¿computer ?next I’m going to Dumped into the garbage
I tried to use VLC on a Chromebook to play music stored on an external drive, but the Chromebook kept losing its connection to the drive. I had to reconnect the drive and wait for VLC to rescan the drive. I finally gave up and used a Linux laptap, which works fine. I’m guessing that Chromebooks don’t play well with external drives.
they blocked youtube on the school chrome book