Plex, the free streaming app, laid off approximately 20% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned, which will affect all departments, including the Personal Media teams.
“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement. “These are all wonderful people, great colleagues, and good friends. But we believe it is the right thing for the long-term health and stability of Plex.”
The streaming app gives users a single destination to upload and organize content (video, audio and photos) from their own server while also allowing them to stream it via mobile app, smart TV or desktop.
In recent years, however, Plex has invested in free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) and live TV offerings. The FAST market has become saturated as many companies have entered the space. Plus, the overall advertising industry has taken a hit, making it harder for companies to earn enough revenue.
Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown. “While we adjusted our business plan last year after the shift in equity markets to get us back on a path to profitability without having to cut personnel expenses, the downturn in the ad market in Q2 put significantly more pressure on our business and ultimately it became clear that we would need to take additional measures in order to maintain a confident path to profitability within the next 18 months,” he said.
He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year.
According to a Slack message from Valory, obtained by The Verge, which first reported the layoffs, Valory noted that 37 employees would be impacted.
Additionally, it seems that Plex may have had another round of layoffs earlier this year. Five months ago, a former account executive posted on LinkedIn that they were “affected by company layoffs.”
As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.
Updated 6/29/23 at 12:10 p.m. ET with a statement from CEO.
Plex has been going downhill for a bit now. FAST is killing it.
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Good news! There is a Jellyfin Tizen build available and it works great. Check it out.
There is a relatively high barrier for this as you do need to build, sign, and push it to your TV.
This is my problem as well. My old-ass Samsung TV has Plex, and after Samsung totally fucked up smart view, it’s my best alternative. Oh well, maybe I need to invest in a dongle of some sort.
There used to be a Tizen app, but Jellyfin team had many issues with Samsung. Maybe a Kodi plugin would work?
My elderly parents are responsible for some FAST views thinking that they were watching something from my library.
I never really watch FAST but aren’t most of it softcore porns 😂
That would be better than any FAST I’ve seen.
I’m not sure how streaming compares to your own curated content. I mean sure in overall convenience for the average person FAST wins, but that’s not the core audience for Plex. If they’re competing with FAST then it would mean there was a major shift in it’s users and I don’t think it has. Nobody who’s enjoyed having a NAS full of on demand content (and invested time and hardware) will just chuck it and go “ah yes streaming random stuff with ads was better after all”.
If you ask me, Plex should take a hard look at what Emby and Jellyfin are doing right because that’s their main competition. I understand they have to make money but locking everything behind their remote server is fundamentally flawed when I can’t access a server sitting two feet away from me without a major detour over the internet. They should have integrated with existing solutions like Authelia, reverse proxies and Talescale not piss against the wind.
Fully agree
FAST?
One of the main things that made me make the switch to Jellyfin last year was the constant pushing of the ad-supported and other internet based streaming content. I was getting tired of pinning my local media libraries only to have them buried at the bottom of the list again under all the other streaming content after the client apps would update on my family’s Rokus. Hardware transcoding is also a nice bonus since I only used Plex’s free tier.
Yeah this is one of the reasons I don’t like companies that profit directly of of pirating. It never ends well and eventually someone is going to figure out they can just buy the company instead of competing on convenience.
FAST
what is that?
In the article. Free Ad Supported sTreaming = FAST.
All the embedded LIVE TV or Movies from Plex are all ad supported streaming media not coming from your own Plex server.
I don’t want any of that on my Plex instance and the focus on FAST has been a clear shift in strategy.
oh that’s right. Shit is fucking annoying. I blocked all of that out, which is why I forgot I wanted to switch to Jellyfin in the first place lol.
My girlfriend asked me why she gets ads on Plex, first i didn’t believe her, but then she showed me them, as a lifetime customer, i was furious until i found out that she was watching something outside my library.
This is a feature, but they should tag it much more obvious.
It’s in the post body, Free Ad-supported Streaming.
It seems like in the last few years the company’s focus has primarily been on adding things to Plex that I do not want as part of Plex. And not adding the audiobook support that I do want.
Look up audiobookshelf if you’re willing to mess with docker a bit and forward a port or two. It’s open source and does a wonderful job.
Look up audiobookshelf if you’re willing to mess with docker a bit and forward a port or two. It’s open source and does a, wonderful job.
Audiobookshelf is great
There was a webtools addon that could add this. I think it’s still out there but I forget the name. I know plugins were disabled, but this did still and does still work for me.
I have tried the plugins, they just don’t work as well as smart audiobook player.
I have a huge audiobook library, I was fully prepared to do all the processes to move and organize my mess of a library to get it working with Plex. I’m sure you’ve seen the GitHub guide floating around.
But when it came time to sit down and configure my server for audiobooks, ebooks, tv, movies, and music, I found that audiobookshelf just did a way better job with less of a headache. My current stack is Beet.io with audible support to move my already downloaded library into a better folder and naming structure. Once I get those all finished I won’t have to use this step. This gets stuff about ~80% of the way there except when the source is really messed up.
From there I have Readarr looking at the Beets destination folder and managing downloads. This is pretty good for getting most of the rest of the info with some clean up and is similar to setting up other Arrs. Then audiobookshelf for final tweaks and browsing/downloading.
It’s quite a pain to ingest an initial large library but for new downloads it’s been pretty seamless. Way easier and more consistent than having to do most of this anyway plus fight with Plex. I do still want them to add support, though.
The audiobookshelf app is pretty good for browsing and downloading but I think the player is way worse than Smart Audiobook Player. But what I do is just use the audiobookshelf app to download the books to Smart’s library folder and then use the best player app for listening.
Thanks! I’ll check out audiobookshelf.
The evil clone of XBMC is finally in its death throes (yes I’m still bitter about that). No worry, Jellyfin is better.
XBMC
Wow that takes me back lol
Does XBMP ring any bells?
007 Nightfire softmod crew checking in. Kodi has been making the best htpc for more than a decade now. I love me some jellyfin, but I’ll probably always have a kodi box or two around the house.
I think Kodi would be more akin to XMBC. What’s the relation with Plex?
Kodi IS XBMC. It’s the same team, XBMC changed their name to Kodi once it became unavoidably awkward that no one was running XBMC on actual Xboxes anymore. Plex started as a fork of XBMC but went down the proprietary route and shunned their FOSS roots.
Wow, it’s almost like those free channels the put all over my Plex that nobody wants was was a bad investment. Still love Plex as a service but I find it hard to see any value in FAST.
Try Jellyfin. Much better
I use Apple TV, something about needing a third party proprietary app makes it seem cobbled together compared to Plex, especially with that app being freemium. Maybe someday they will have a dedicated app. Last time I looked (probably a year ago) they didn’t have a system for ratings to make a kids account, has that been added?
Well, on Apple TV you have Swiftfin, (which is 1st party) but as I don’t own Apple devices I can’t tell you.
I have swiftfin. I’ve made bug reports etc, they’re like “ok yeah maybe next year.” Literally two updates in 2 years
It’s an open source app made by a non profit group. If you want to get things fixed consider a bounty or donation. Open source developers tend to not have an interest in developing for such a closed ecosystem, especially considering it charges them to distribute their apps.
Yes absolutely agree. But with that said it’s still unusable for the foreseeable future.
Yeah I get that. It’s unfortunate how many tv ecosystems there are to support now.
As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.
And yet, it is not enough. Perhaps the lesson is to NOT take that VC money if you want your company to survive.
You’re probably confounding revenue with profit. I’m not sure about Plex in particular, but it’s completely possible to have millions in revenue and actually be in the red
As someone who’s working for their third VC-backed firm, I took the previous comment to mean that the VC money was used to grow the company knowingly in the red, like many growth-stage, VC-funded businesses.
Heck a fair number of post-IPO tech firms continue to operate in the red as a result of their share sales.
Well they also spent the past 10 years building 80% stuff we never wanted
Doesn’t Plex still use Python 2 as well?
And forcing logins to go through their centralized servers.
Plex login system is such a nightmare. There’s a mix of something that is local, some that are online but displayed as local, and some that are completely online. I gave up on Plex when I can’t figure out how to remove an old Plex instance that somehow the clients still connecting to instead of the new server.
I too cancelled my Plex pass about 6mo ago after a colleague introduced me to JellyFin. I imagine the huge hit ISPs have had on tracking torrent downloads is also curtailing their customer base. (Along with many people abandoning pirating and just paying for the convenience of various streaming services).
Great, let them burn. I am a plexpass lifetime sub, but switched to Jelly. Opensource for the win.
Plex has been crap for at least 5 years now. Switched to Emby a few years ago and couldn’t be happier.
Honestly have no idea why Plex still has such a huge fanbase. It’s so commercialized and gross.
Can I just ask, why not JellyFin?
People like myself who, perhaps, set up an Nvidia Shield as a Plex server can’t really use it. I don’t want my main PC running all the time to serve JF, and the Shield was a cheap and convenient way to serve Plex. If the Shield could serve JF, then that would be different, perhaps.
I suppose I should start planning for an alternative home media server at some point though. Never know…
Let me tell you that it’s worth it. You could probably start with a pi with some external storage for a while depending on how big your library is… but getting some metal to run proxmox over is very very nice (and unfortunately very addicting)
As a long-time Jellyfin user, I’ve never really understood how Plex makes money providing a handful of additional features over the FOSS alternative.
Plex is available in a lot more app stores than Jellyfin or Emby is. I run a plex server for friends but I use emby for my personal consumption. The reason I continue to use plex is because it’s available on all sorts of smart TV’s and semi-obscure streaming devices that Jellyfin isn’t.
Why use jellyfin when you already have Plex set up?
@steal_your_face @Kushan Because FOSS.
If Plex were to go down, how easy is it to transfer my setup to jellyfin?
The jellyfin community is probably best for that question.
You can try jellyfin alongside plex, just install it and point it to your media. Then you can see if it works for you
Literally just did this on Saturday. It was easy to do and I’m not seeing any significant changes in resource utilization. I am enjoying being able to directly download media onto my phone with Infuse, however.
The only issue with Jellyfin for me is that it keeps transcoding my media. I just want direct stream it my client is capable but whyyyyy transcoding ittttt error for no reason.
Yeah It’s kinda hard to get used to
Are you using the app or a browser? I found that when I was using the browser it would transcode but when using the app it would be direct play.
it keeps transcoding my media
I’m pretty sure there is a setting (settings) to turn that off.
You need to use a native app on hardware that supports the format
It can definitely do direct stream since I use it on my setup. I’ll check out how when I got home.
You can try jellyfin alongside plex, just install it and point it to your media. Then you can see if it works for you
This doesn’t surprise me. The “features” that keep being added to Plex drive me nuts. I just want to be able to browse and watch from my own library.
Those features are what bring in revenue and I don’t blame them for trying to be profitable. You can only get so far on lifetime subscriptions.
As long as they don’t abandon the core product so I can continue using it as the awesome media server that it is I have no complaints. They can add all the additional features they want.
DVR, commercial skip, intro and credit detection, plexpy etc… are all awesome features which have been added in the last 5 years or so and enhance the core product.
Well, it’s pretty unsurprising considering all companies are doing the same.
I’ve given a chance to Jellyfin but it’s really frustating how it simply refused to play video files without any descriptive error logs. I think it mostly doesn’t work properly on HEVC files (I think Edge is the only browser that properly supports x265) and my Android TV also doesn’t play the damn thing.
Also adding that video files from the same release (which assumed are the same encoder), they either work perfectly or just refuse to work :(
I do not pay for Plex but I considered in the past getting a lifetime sub x)
HEVC files work fine in JF. I stream to a smart (android) TV, Shield and windows app. You need to have transcoding enabled though for smart tvs and browsers which isn’t really an option for docker unless you have the grunt on your host.
Docker does work for transcoding but because I’m using Proxmox it’s slightly more complicated since I want my windows VMs to not be a slog and run mediaservers on a iGPU.
Atleast on Plex it can do software transcode and not be bothered by an annoying “cannot play this media on this device”. This was a few months ago and I still run both but Plex serves me fine fot the time being
After having checked out Plex, Jellyfin and Emby I’ve decided the latter was still my favorite. Jellyfin just isn’t there yet, lack of built in image-scrubbers, intro-outro-detection and quality clients just makes it inconvenient for me. Plex’s external authentication makes it a no go for me.
Emby is the only one that’s focused on what it tries to achieve and delivers. Also the support team is super helpful and pushes out fixes in a pretty good time. Not FOSS though
I’ve had a lifetime licence for a couple years, I’m becoming more and more bitter about the service but jellyfin isn’t as appropriate for the people I share with.
Plex isn’t improving its core service, in favour of focusing on new FAST customers, but there just isn’t an alternative so they get to abuse their position.
I’m honestly surprised that Plex has revenue in the “double-digit millions”
Jellyfin NEEDS a plexamp tier music streaming app for me to consider moving unless plex completely self-owns harder than Twitter and reddit combined
I’ve never used plex or plexamp but I have used Finamp for listening / offline downloading of my music collection from my Jellyfin server. Is this perhaps what you’re looking for? iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/finamp/id1574922594 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unicornsonlsd.finamp
Can it do gapless playback?
Gapless? Do you mean downloading media for offline playback? Yes:
Just be prepared for the space requirements of your media library as you may find your phone quickly running out of storage if you have a lot of high res audio:
No, sorry, I mean: can it play sequential tracks with no pause in between them? Like when listening to Dark Side of the Moon, for the classic example.
The first thing Finamp asks me is to input the URL of my server. I use the server both on the LAN when at home and over the internet when out and about. Will Finamp intelligently use the LAN when I’m on the same network if I use the external URL?
I can confidently say that no it will not “intelligently use the LAN” when you’re on the same network - I don’t know of any service that will… unless Plex/Plexamp somehow does this?
The solution is as someone else said - use a DNS Server to forward it in your LAN to the internal IP. If you’re unsure how to do this, just search how to setup a Hairpin NAT for the router you own. I can confirm that once you set this up, it will work seamlessly with both Finamp and Jellyfin.
I guess it doesn’t really matter if it does since I’m only in it for the music…
There are definitely services that do this. Something that comes to mind that’s related to Plex is nzb360, an Android app to connect all your torrent downloaders, usenet downloaders, sonarr/radarr, etc. It has an option for Local Connection Switching that, if enabled, will switch to using the local IP of your services when in the same LAN and go back to public IP when you’re not on the same LAN
Local DNS to point at your reverse proxy works just fine.
Just use your DNS-server and forward it in your LAN to the internal IP
facedesk.gif
why didn’t i think of that
Jellyfin needs apps I can install on my parent’s TV, that’s the only thing that keeps me on Plex.
Agreed. Plexamp gave me random album radio and I can’t go back to minutes of silence until I realise I have to choose another album.
I’m currently testing Navidrome, which supports many subsonic based apps, my only issue atm is the lack of client side metadata management.
How bad? If I can download music for local playback, change star ratings, and make playlists, that’s probably enough for me to bear it
You may need another tool for metadata management separate from either jellyfin/navidrome, if either failed to match I can’t seem to manually match or merge artists. Fairly frequently an album will display an artist in a way that isn’t interpreted as the same so it just makes a seperate artist for it with little metadata.
Plex does the same thing, the main difference is that I can manually modify how Plex displays its metadata and tell it who the artist is and that’s that.
With the others you have to work hard to modify the names and metadata outside.
Other than song/album ratings, I don’t do metadata mangement in Plexamp.
I know nothing about PlexAmp, but could FinAmp be what you search for? Does Music only and let’s you grab your songs for offline usage.
