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.
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’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.
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’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
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?
Just use your DNS-server and forward it in your LAN to the internal IP
facedesk.gif
why didn’t i think of that
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.
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
I guess it doesn’t really matter if it does since I’m only in it for the music…
Local DNS to point at your reverse proxy works just fine.
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.
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.
Jellyfin needs apps I can install on my parent’s TV, that’s the only thing that keeps me on Plex.
Removed by mod
Unfettered Capitalism breeds emshitification.
Why build and keep a great product when shareholders will always push for more growth and higher revenue. Even if that means laying off your best devs and pissing off users.
Is this company even publicly traded? I don’t think so.
Doesn’t need to be publicly traded to have those issues.
Yeah, case in point: Reddit.
But they want to, that’s why they’re started
Or we could all switch to an Open Source alternative, Jellyfin, and either donate what you’d normally pay Plex or just enjoy it for free. I’ve never used Plex and started with Jellyfin. It’s gotten the job done thus far
It’s the app ecosystem for plex that keeps me there. There’s an app for my LG tv, an app for my in-laws’ Roku etc.
Yes you’re right, Jellyfin isn’t on many platforms but I’m pretty sure they have an app for LG and Roku (Clients here). Although the LG app isn’t the best from what I remember. What I usually do is use an Amazon fire stick with Tailscale for my family and it’s been working well. But also as popularity increases others will be able to contribute more and the apps will become better.
I use the Roku app every day. It’s very good.
It’s picked up nearly every feature I had used on Plex within the last year. The developers are doing great.
The devs for it are rock stars. So many good improvements in such a short time.
In case you didn’t know, Roku and LG TVs have a Jellyfin app.
I do know but I’m grateful for your sharing anyway.
My point was more that plex coverage was wider than jellyfin.
I do agree. Unfortunately some platforms like PlayStation for example won’t allow Open Source apps so there is no chance in there being an app for these platforms.
However, more platforms are slowly being added with the Tizen app for Samsung TVs in progress and usable through side loading.
I downloaded the free emby server for my pc and paid the single payment 4€ for the android tv app. No regrets, works great.
If jellyfin could record and playback OTA TV on my Apple TV I’d switch tomorrow, but it seems the team is either unable to or unwilling to work on that feature which is core to how my household uses Plex. The only maybe solution is Infuse which is paid and closed source so is no better really than using Plex in that regard.
Like most things in the world, your use case is not the only use case and as such a solution that checks all the boxes for you will not check all the boxes for everyone.
Does jellyfin supoort Ota recording at all?
It’s a big part of how I use plex as well.
Edit: looks like they may will be looking into it much more but I use hdhomeruns : https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/live-tv/
I wonder how I would replace plexamp
If you are on Android there is Finamp, which isn’t quite as nice but it is clean and free. If you’re willing to pay a couple bucks there’s also Symfonium which IMO is even better than Plexamp. It has way more customization and I love that it uses Material You.
Edit: looks like they may will be looking into it much more but I use hdhomeruns : https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/live-tv/
I don’t understand what you mean by “they may be looking into it much more”? HDHomerun is supported explicitly per the link you provided
I* may be. Autocorrect got me
How does jellyfin compare to Kodi and Emby? I’ve been using Emby for the last couple of years and it’s fine, but I wonder if I’m missing out on any features.
Jellyfin came out of Emby if I am not wrong. Something like they took the open source parts and created jellyfin and then improvised upon that.
Jellyfin is a fork from when Emby went closed source.
Hmm, might give it a shot then. Emby seems more polished than Kodi was, which was the main reason I picked it. Does jellyfin have any of the features Emby premiere offers (GPU transcoding and a Google TV app?).
Part of plex’s problem is their lifetime license subscription simply isn’t sustainable, much less geared for growth. Add in some of the cruff they have added into stuff like their “streaming” services and yeah this seems kinda obvious. Especially since they were relying on VC funding drives as recently as 5 years ago.
I’ve never paid plex but just seals the deal. They obviously can’t be trusted to handle the money I give them properly. I wish Jellyfin was a litte more fullybaked though. The app for appletv is really bad
Edit:
Due to some maximally pedantic comments from @SaltySalamander@lemmy.fmhy.ml , I should clear something up. I’ve never paid plex. I can’t trust them to handle the money I give them hypothetically. This doesn’t mean that i’ve both not given them money and given them money. This means that in the case in which I did give them money, I wouldn’t trust them to handle it properly, given the rounds of layoffs happening there
I’ve never paid plex
They obviously can’t be trusted to handle the money I give them properly
Which is it?
Can you explain your confusion? I don’t know what you’re asking
Let’s try combining your statements and see if that clears it up.
“They can’t be trusted to handle the money I’ve never paid them.”
That still doesn’t make any sense. I never said I paid them. What I think happened is you believed to have found some contradiction in what I said and felt so clever about it you had to run to your keyboard lest you forget just how clever you were.
It’s possible that in your rush to feel clever, you forgot to understand the english language. Happens a lot with people who have something to prove. Is it possible you read the sentence “They obviously can’t be trusted to handle the money I give them properly.” and took it as a tacit statement that I had given them money? To say that someone or some entity cannot properly handle the money I give them does not mean I gave that person or entity money. It means that should I give them money, they wouldn’t handle it well, thus I’m not going to. I can understand if english isn’t your first language, but this is a very typical construction. One should be able to understand it by the fifth grade. Hope that clears up any confusion. if it doesn’t help I highly recommend taking a break from the internet while you brush up on your reading comprehension
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.
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.
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.
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.
I used Plex for years, and it is the superior product (if you pay) compared to Open Source alternatives. However, after seeing Plex’s recent incentive pivots and looking for investors I jumped shipped to Jellyfin. The thermometor of enshittification is indicating that Plex is on its way out.
Folks who haven’t looked at alternatives yet, do so now.
Literally the only two things keeping me from jumping ship are the multi-user support and Plexamp.
If you are on Android there is Finamp for Jellyfin. It’s not quite as nice but it is clean and free. There is also Symfonium which is I think $3 but it is even nicer than Plexamp IMO. The great thing about Jellyfin is there are many options.
Jellyfin has support for mutliple users
Jellyfin has both of those things, only slightly worse.
I don’t think the multi user is worse, I prefer the way Jellyfin does it. Finamp is definitely a downgrade though.
Jellyfin, caddy and duckdns can get you all the benefits Plex offers without needing to use their servers for logging in
I’m a lifetime Plex pass subscriber and I’ve also used Kodi and Emby… as far as I can remember at the moment I’ve never really looked into Jellyfin tho… Does it support OTA DVR with a tuner card like Plex?
That’s my must have at this point.
Jellyfin is an Emby fork, so it should support everything Emby does and more; I’ve never fucked around with OTA with it, but as far as I know it can do it
It is? TIL, that’s pretty interesting.
Emby was originally open-source, but went closed-source; Jellyfin forked from the last open-source version
Good to know…
But according to this article from March it looks like it doesn’t support PCI or USB tuners unfortunately.
Also sounds like it’s quite a ways behind Plex still in terms of UI, bugginess, and ease of use when away from home.
I’ll be sticking with Plex for now.
The last time I was having problems with Plex and authentication I installed emby alongside it
Emby was a hell of a lot more responsive, Plex seemed to be more compatible with, well everything.
I use live TV and DVR so I think I might miss that on jellyfin
Jellyfin does support live tv and recording
Well shit… it seems the recent rash of enshittification continues. I didn’t realize Plex was doing this so I guess an exit strategy is required. Thanks for the heads up.
Jellyfin is so good now. I used to use Plex but I have no need for it now at all.
Anywhere for people to browse pay-for-access jellyfin servers?
I tried Jellyfin a couple years ago, but it always struggled with ASS (advanced substation alpha) subtitles. I remember it had to burn them on play, or I’d have to use something like SickRage or handbrake or something to pre-burn them, otherwise my relatively modest server would cry. Googling isn’t telling me much, anyone know if this has gotten better?
I have no issues. You can either set up automatic transcoding, or enable DirectPlay if your TV (or whatever other client you use) supports the format you’re playing.
Know a good way to export/import? I’ve got a large database with custom artworks etc.
Jellyfin has tools that let you export a watch list from one app and merge it with jellyfin
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
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.
Plex has been going downhill for a bit now. FAST is killing it.
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
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?
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.
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.
Jellyfin doesn’t have a native samsung TV app :(
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s in the post body, Free Ad-supported Streaming.
Whew I’m glad I just started up my jellyfin server!
I’m honestly surprised that Plex has revenue in the “double-digit millions”
If Plex were to go down, how easy is it to transfer my setup to jellyfin?
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.
It can definitely do direct stream since I use it on my setup. I’ll check out how when I got home.
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.
Yeah It’s kinda hard to get used to
You need to use a native app on hardware that supports the format
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
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).
Corporate Greed
Seriously. They expect 30% growth? They can afford a few salaries.
They don’t want to invest in the core program features anymore, they only want more customers & content acquisition.
What they want is inevitably going to make us their competition, Plex’s FAST userbase growth will be the death of the original product.
That’s what I thought at first but it seems even with the growth they won’t be profitable, which means they still don’t break even if I understand correctly. In any case I don’t wanna defend a corporate entity, just enrich the reflexion if possible. If the whole enterprise is not at risk of collapsing, your priority should be your employees.
That won’t change anytime soon because the current way society is set up incentivizes it unfortunately.
