Adding streaming services and content aggregation

Feature Suggestions
1

if plex is going to continue down the route of adding streaming media services and integrating with existing library content, please start adding them all.

  • google play music
  • spotify
  • netflix
  • amazon prime
  • hulu
  • etc
2

Sounds like a good idea, but will not work. Plex has no plans to implement DRM. All these premium services use it in some way. Only possible way would to have these services make some kind of add-on that can handle the DRM and then Plex could play it, which I doubt will ever happen.

3

Plex doesn’t need to implement the DRM. I just want the ability to manually add a link in my movie library to a movie that is stored on Amazon, Google Play, etc. This way a complete library can be seen in one place even if playing it involves linking to different services.

3 Likes
4

@Mimccann huh? Tidal has “DRM” and they just supported that.

This user is talking about integrating the streaming services he already pays for into Plex so everything is in one place. I think that is an awesome idea.

5 Likes
5

This was most likely tidal reaching out, also tidal is nothing compared to the big streaming companies. Whatever they paid or agreed on will be way higher for most other companies, like Netflix. Their best bet is HULU.

6

While I agree they should add all of these services, I think they’ll have trouble adding support for streaming video seeing their association with pirated content, and people ripping their own movies.

I hope they do, and they may have a better time trying to get the streaming music services at least.

9

Thanks TeknoJunky for this idea. It would be awesome to see it happen.

HOWEVER, you have conflated very different types of services (audio versus video) in this feature request and that makes it super difficult to address the “simpler” one (audio) if one also attaches the significantly more complex one (video) to the same request.

It would be great if you separated the two different requests into two different entries. Reason? Plex has already stated they won’t be doing integration with video services (Add in access for Netflix, Prime video, hulu) so making this present feature request focused on the piece they haven’t said “no” to might help this one get more traction.

10

OP mentions both music and video streaming services (Netflix, Spotify and Hulu)

1 Like
11

That’s a good point!

And that’s why this is a bad feature request, since they are two very different things, with different legal and technical requirements, and different companies in many cases.

This really needs to be spread out into two separate feature requests – one about audio streaming services and one about video streaming services.

How can that be achieved?

In fact, the Plex staff has already shut down a separate feature request for integration with streaming video services (Add in access for Netflix, Prime video, hulu) so we know that won’t happen.

So this feature request should be edited to focus only on music streaming.

12

Actually, there’s been some stories in the news the last few weeks, and this point is made:

Now, Plex is gearing up to launch a whole host of additional features that could position it as a serious contender in the streaming space. In addition to plans for rentals and subscription video, Plex is also planning to offer deep-linking to content that’s available on other streaming platforms—even if it’s not available on Plex, a spokesperson told Gizmodo. According to TechCrunch, this would work by allowing users to search for content through Plex and then access it through whatever service it’s being hosted on.

So this idea may come to frutition if you’re patient long enough. From the sounds of it, Plex will serve as the User Interface, but hand off to the streaming service’s own platform for rights management and playback.

You can read the entire article on Gizmodo here:

13

Here’s hoping that becomes possible. Heck I don’t even have to have access to my personal library on Google Music. Just access to their own streaming content in a pass through mode would be a big step forward.

14

I am closing this to give back votes as it is not a question of simply adding them because we feel like it. We speak with many content providers to try to set a deal. Some will, some won’t.

1 Like