Server Version#: 1.26.2.5797
Player Version#: 9.6.2.34353
The Android app feels like hot garbage and I frankly can’t believe Plex has the gall to demand payment for it or subscribe to Plex Pass to be able to play music from my own server through it.
The first issue I take with it is that the Android Auto integration is terrible. Why are there two “Music” tabs that have completely different contents? In fact, why does one of these tabs have no content on it? When I plug it in, the UI on my car’s screen doesn’t seem to be aware of my server and the media on it. There’s no music to select on the first tab, and if I move over to the second tab, I’m limited to a “Recently Played” list that does seem to be pulling from my server after all, so what gives? And even then the status of the currently playing track is completely broken - whenever the song changes it thinks it’s paused and the timer stays at 0:00. Youtube Music’s integration works flawlessly in comparison.
Secondly, when I’m casting to a Chromecast in my house, the Chromecast gives me a “Something went wrong” error if I attempt to play or shuffle one of my collections to it. If I’m not casting, it works fine, and the Chromecast is able to both show me an artist bio page as I browse and play music I select from albums.
Look, I know I only paid five bucks, but the fact that I had to even pay at all for something so miserably broken just to be able to play more than 30 seconds of music at a time is disgusting.
Look into Plexamp. This is a specialized player by Plex for just music. It’s much better than Plex when using AA.
Except Plexamp needs a Plex Pass to use. I’m not keen on signing up for yet another subscription service just to use one part of it.
Ugh. Alright. I can sympathize as I keep my subscriptions to a minimum myself. That’s why I run an extensive Plex server and thus have a Plex Pass. The amount of functionality I get out of Plex makes the $5/month worth it. Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney, et. al. Sorry you don’t get any of my money…
I just wish Plex would support podcasts and do it right but they abandoned that.
I recently learned that the player status desync issue extends past Android Auto and impacts Bluetooth control - I started an album in my car via a Bluetooth connection without AA and after the first song my car’s stereo would report something like “Unknown Song - Unknown Artist” and I couldn’t pause, play, or skip with either the on-screen buttons or the buttons on my steering wheel. Meanwhile, launching the webapp on my phone from plex.tv by asking for the desktop version of the site or by going directly to my server via an IPv4 or IPv6 address gets me working bluetooth control in my car.
I’ve also seen complaints from other people popping up about how radio stations seeded with an artist build a playlist with a grand total of 5 songs on the Android app, and how the download-for-later feature just isn’t working all around.
I’ll be blunt, from my POV it looks to me like Plex has decided to focus on the cool-kids-only version of their music player that can only be used at a premium at the detriment of the core app. This might push me to look into alternatives to Plex. Not that anyone cares, I am just one irate internet person after all.
I don’t experience any of those problems. Then again my mode of operation is just to shuffle all my music.
So I just now noticed that trying to play album collections is yet another busted feature in the Android app. If you choose to play or shuffle an album collection, it will queue up each album as a singular item, and the app will play the first track from it before moving onto the next album’s first song.
(Note the error message, to boot)
If I minimize the player view, then tap the minimized player to bring it back up and look at the queue, the queue is then replaced entirely by the currently playing album’s track list. Going to the end doesn’t move onto the next album or trying to go back at the beginning doesn’t go to the previous.
Why isn’t this just getting all of the songs in the collection’s albums and queueing them up like the web player does? I suppose this explains why my Chromecast choked when I tried to play this collection on it…
I’m facing exactly the same issue with two Music tabs, one empty and the second one limited. Can’t browse by artists or albums (or anything else), only the last added, last played etc. are available. Moreover when playing someting, typically when it finishes the first song and moves to the next one the main button changes from pause to play although the song is still playing, as well as it won’t show song progress anymore. It won’t react to any presses.
