rocket player 6 1.0 always crashes shortly after startup while scanning library

[jayr2305]

just updated unfortunately to 6.1.0 and now rocket player crashes everytime because of it always seems to scan the library. shouldn't be a problem, never had any crash with versions before. now it crashes. maybe it has to do with the aggressive rate me popups which are now in rocket player and isyncr.

what's happening with these favorite apps of mine? no feedback anymore from the developers, unnecessary aggressive popups to rate the app, not working password entry with isyncr wifi, crashes on rocket player. 

have to manually downgrade rocket player just like isyncr it seems...

[Daniel Faigin]

I'm seeing the same behavior. Not sure where JRT or their successors are going with these products, but I'm back into looking into alternatives.

[jayr2305]

interesting. seems like jrt sold their apps to muma, who changed the apps just to integrate an aggressive rating window and basically broke functionality in the course. yeah, doesn't bode well... now downgraded to the last jrt studio versions of rocket player and isyncr and disabled autoupdates. wish they could have fixed the notifications bug on one ui 4 - where it always lags one title behind - but i guess that is hopeless. this support forum also seems dead... to justin: thanks for all your work - bought all premium features of both apps - , but it's sad to see it go down so fast

[APK]

What a shame. Bought the unlocked version of Rocket Player 7+ years ago and have had several pleasant interactions with Justin and Caroline over the course of time. Even bought a subscription I didn't need just to support them since I got so much use out of the app. Sad to see everything come crashing down so hard so fast. Sincerely, though, I hope they were able to cash in.

If folks are looking for alternatives, I've started using Musicolet and it seems pretty promising so far.

[Dan Muller]

I've been looking as well and tried Musicolet. It does look quite nice. (Doesn't have smart playlists, but oh well...) However, the deal killer for me on that one is not a problem with Musicolet, but rather with the way Google Assistant interacts with it. I primarily use these apps in the car and want to be able to open playlists via voice commands. I have not been able to figure out how to get GA to work properly with Musicolet. And, of course, Google tech support doesn't even acknowledge requests, let alone responding. If you can get it to work, let me know.

What I'm seeing in detail is this: Suppose I have a playlist called "Vocal". With Rocket Player, I can say, "Play Vocal with Rocket Player". Google responds with, "Sure, asking Rocket Player to play vocal". And it did that--before RP's rescan bug started causing it to fail. But if I say, "Play Vocal with Musicolet", it responds with, "Sure, asking Musicolet to play vocal with Musicolet". And since I have no playlist called "Vocal with Musicolet", it fails. I even tried renaming the playlist to "Vocal with Musicolet", but that didn't work either.

[jayr2305]

just crossposting this from the isyncr group

it's all really sad. i'm still using itunes and don't want to leave my system i'm using for now more than 20 years. you can still use isyncr/rocket player combo if you downgrade. here's the working combination, which i'm using. play counts and ratings are also synching from and to itunes.

iSyncr Desktop App 5.2.20 (still downloadable via https://www.jrtstudio.com/de/iSyncr-Desktop-Download)
Rocket Player 5.18.60 (just google it, you'll find source to download. you'll have to deinstall the newer versions in order to install the older ones. don't forget to disable automatic updates in the google store)

iSyncr 6.8.50 (see above)

hope that helps.

[APK]

Can confirm, Danmu.  I can't get Google Assistant to play a playlist using Musicolet no matter what command syntax I use. In fact, I get inconsistent results even just asking it to play an album or song.  I'm running a fully updated Pixel 6 for reference.

Luckily for me Assistant isn't a big use case -- otherwise this probably wouldn't cut it.  For me, though, Musicolet is checking most of the necessary boxes.

On another thread in another forum, I saw someone recommend Oto Music.  Looks interesting but I haven't tried it.

[Dan Muller]

After evaluating several alternatives, I've finally decided to switch to Samsung Music. It's the best I've found for working with Google Assistant voice commands, which is high-priority for me. Otherwise, it's pretty basic, but that's OK for my use.

So long, Rocket Player; it was a good run for several years! And best wishes to Justin and Caroline, wherever they may be!

[Joe Castleman]

Thanks for this. I reported the repeated crashing/minimizing back in April.  It's been nearly four months and they haven't fixed the problem nor have they provided any kind of explanation.  I paid for the unlocked version, so I don't sound like someone who complains about something they got for free.  The old Rocket Player had its problems but JRT would email me back quickly to help (i.e. within a day or two, not after several months).  Most of the recent reviews in the Play Store have the same generic reply about contacting support, even when the reviewer said they'd already done so (and, in one case, predicted they'd get the generic reply).  I don't know what's going on with the new developer, but it doesn't seem to involve debugging their own software.

[꧁༒ ᴛʜᴇ Sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇsᴛ Bᴇᴅғᴇʟʟᴏᴡ.༒꧂]

the best thing for all of you to do, is:
1.) to uninstall your current version of rocket player

2.) go look for rocket player's { version 5.18.60 } APK — this is the site i used < Download Rocket Music Player 5.18.60 for Android | Uptodown.com >, but if you don't trust strange links, feel free to search out your own source

3.) allow your mobile to install APKs from unknown sources

4.) install APK (you should be able to do so directly from the notifications pulldown; if not, look in the recents in your my files folder)

5.) from rocket player's google play page, disable auto-updating (i found out the hard way, a couple of hours ago, when i went to play some more music from rocket player

obviously the new owners are not interested in fixing their player; why, i truly do not know

but, at least we are not completely screwed over, here

i believe you'll be able to maintain your playlists, like i was able to; though, yeah..

..you'll need to reconfigure everything else, upon reinstall

but, when compared to the alternative, i believe that is but small inconvenience

i must reïterate: disable auto-update

[Robert Rollison]

such a shame! I agree, JRT Studios always helped me out, downloaded the older version and disabled the updates, but will have to look into other music apps. Nothing is permanent except change...

[Joe Castleman]

Bringing this up again to see whether anyone has been able to use Rocket Player version 6.2.0.3 without any issues.  I got a new phone, and my old apps transferred over, including the old APK versions of Rocket Player and iSyncr.  I am fairly certain that I had configured both of them not to auto-update (in the Play Store), but they did anyway.  I noticed this when trying to perform a USB sync, and the desktop iSyncr complained about the license on my new device.  There was some instruction about reinstalling the license on the device, but I didn't see that option in the new version (at least not where I'd expect to have seen it), and rather than spending more time on that I reverted back iSyncr back to the APK version (6.8.50).  That fixed the USB sync issue.

Rocket Player, meanwhile, had updated to 6.2.0.3 (and it's still there) but, so far, I am not noticing any of the problems I'd encountered following last year's updates (crashing, minimizing, etc.).  I had purchased the Rocket Unlocker to begin with, which (I'd have hoped) might make ads a non-issue even after the developer/owner changed; this didn't seem to make any difference before now.  But I'm not seeing anything in the "What's New" (on the Play Store) that suggests any major update like this, but I also think some of that info there is no longer new (I'm not sure if there's a change log somewhere that goes into more detail).  For now 6.2.0.3 is chugging along so I'm leaving it alone, just wondering whether anyone else had noticed this.

Joe