How do you feel about the discontinuation of podcast support?

General Discussions Plex Features
106

Thanks for the tip.
This is still a Douglas Adams style information policy though (“The information was there for everyone to see, it’s not our problem you didn’t access the archives in time.”)
I tried to find any mention of podcast removal in the #announcements section you linked and failed miserably for the first 20 minutes.
Found it now ad I’m sure if I put some work into understanding how this forum works, I’d be able to one day really make use of this, but I highly doubt I’d had seen it in the flood of information there.
(also I saw that the forum is migrating to another service in june there, so probably no point in digging in just now :slight_smile: )

I still love Plex, the podcast thing was just a nice bonus at the time.
I’m mostly annoyed that they hyped the feature up back when it was introduced (sending me several mails about it I believe), getting me to try it out, actually liking it and then, when I had included it in my routine, just remove it as if it was some minor fix or that individual plex name thing.

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107

This is my line of thinking as well.

108

beckfield, I know you’ve only posted the information and they’re not your words but I find this comment to be a joke. Considering how many features are added or removed without any consideration for the users, and how many bugs and issues have been around for years that they acknowledge but refuse to do anything about, shows they are definitely not interested in ‘serving [their] awesome user community’.

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109

Pretty unhappy here at the removal of podcasts from Plex. I understand there are alternatives to explore, however, it’s a bit frustrating to be forced to have to do that now after enjoying podcasts through Plex for so long.

I understand they have stated they want to put their focus on other things. I cannot imagine however that the way the podcast functionality was set up through Plex actually consumed much of their time or energy to maintain. Once that infrastructure was made it seems like it would be very easy for them to maintain it with little or no effort.

If that’s true, then the removal of podcasts simply amounts to the removal of a less popular feature that some of us very much enjoyed; but they viewed as a minor annoyance… or worse: a feature that didn’t “rake in the revenue”.

If they feel they can do this to one feature now, they’ll feel comfortable doing it to any other feature we enjoy currently. This is simply NOT good business.

They should also remember that if they killed podcasts because of the lack of revenue it brought in, unhappy MONTHLY premium subscribers like myself are that much closer to ending our subscriptions; which moves the balance sheet that much closer towards/into the red.

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110

Yep. You aren’t the only one.

There’s definitely less value now than there was in 2018 when they started to chip away at things.

I forgot to add that LyricFind has been a feature that’s been sketchy lately. I and a few others on the forum have noted that the Lyrics have failed to load and was NOT given any info if that was a LyricFind api status problem or if it was on Plex’s end.

Was told if I didn’t want that to happen that I should add my own lyrics using .txt files locally instead of depending on LyricFind altogether. Stuff just breaks when it wants whenever it wants.

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111

Plex debuted Podcasts but then had no extra basic playback tools like skip or downloading which eventually lead them to have yet another stab at it with a revamp a couple of years ago. However, that revamp of podcasts in Plex clients hit snags yet again. So, podcasts actually did cause a lot of energy, resources, time and money that got wasted.

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112

I’ve been using Plex less than a year and I’m constantly blown away but the ever-growing list of bugs, issues and complaints by disgruntled users that Plex just ignores. For that reason alone, regardless of any awesome features it might grant me, I absolutely refuse to pay for a Plex Pass.

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113

I found out yesterday that podcasts don’t work. I originally thought it was just some kind of bug. It’s probably been the most used feature for me lately. I bought the plex pass because I liked the idea of one hub for all media. Great, thanks.

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114

Lifetime Pass user here, no notification from Plex about discontinuation of the podcast functionality, just found out today four days after it happened when I came to listen to my weekly podcast on my Sonos speakers through Plex. To say I’m pissed is an understatement, shame on you Plex

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115

I don’t know what bizarre prioritization strategy they use over there, but in the years of being a lifetime Plex member I have watched them ignore anything that anyone ever really cared about feature-wise, pretend things were fixed when they weren’t, and ultimately disappoint a majority of their user base over and over again. Is it still the best option for what it does? Yes. However. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time migrating data and feeds from various podcast sources, changing my app and download setup for podcasts, combining everything under Plex because of course they’re not going to just pull the rug out from under me and get rid of a feature under cover of darkness in the hopes that no one would notice, right? And it’s not like they don’t have ready access to the data to show that there are at least probably a couple of hundred of us, if not thousands of us who actually were using the podcast feature, right? The idea that I could come back from vacation to find that podcast support, indeed any trace of my podcasts at all, was just gone, with no explanation or email or backup or anything, and now I have to scramble to try and remember which podcasts I was subscribed to? And go through the painful process of setting everything up all over again, downloading everything again, reinstalling and configuring other applications again, and creating download folders and permissions and all that ridiculous nonsense that I undid thinking Plex would not do something like this? Just unbelievable… except of course it’s entirely believable. Because here at Plex, we don’t care about you! At all! No, really. We don’t. At all. #$, Plex. & %.

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116

This is unbelievable… from one day to the next my dozens of podcasts have gone to hell, without a sad notification to warn about it (do these Plex people think we have nothing better to do than read their blog entries)…
You guys get more disgusting every day. This way of mistreating your premium users I hope you take your toll someday, karma is a ■■■■■■■ and you do not stop mistreating your users with botched updates and removing features happily without saying a peep.
I still use plex because I share my libraries with family and friends, but with every stab in the back you give us customers, I’m closer to the alternative environment. It’s a bit more work, but it works frankly better, and there are no lazy dictators behind it, who instead of making the product work well, remove features to avoid having to do anything, you know, if the dog is dead, the rabies is over, right?
Believe me I won’t cry the day plex goes to ■■■■ for hurting their user base.

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117

To be honest, Plex Podcasts could not hold up even a candle at some of the basic podcasts apps and services out there. I tried using it, but i found it awful, could not even add over half of my subscriptions and the issues were never addressed. So yeah, indifferent as well. I was holding my breadth for a fix.

118

Nah, not only they happily killed the service, but they forgot to properly warn their users, as simple as this. Who didn’t receive an email for “All accounts are having a unique username set” bullshit just a day before the announcement of podcasts killing? Who cares about the username, for god’ sake!

But hey, it seems it’s more important than warn their clients they are about to kill a service.
When I began to use plex was because I had control of my media, I don’t want to depend on any big tech to see or listen whatever I want to. So I spend a lot of hours of my life to have a curated list of tv shows, movies, music, and podcasts to have the control of them, and re-listen them whenever I want.

This is infuriating, just as simple as this. Now, I have no clue what podcasts I had, or even worse, my family members had, because we listen some daily, others biweekly, and those are pretty easy to find another solution like podgrab and add them again, but there are a plenty of podcasts which are monthly, bimonthly or with another period of time which is very difficult to remember, find again all the rss urls, and begin again, losing again several hours of my life I thought I already spent and never had to deal again. Which is the entire point of use a home solution.

I exhort plex devs to at least re-activate the podcast service, and give us a grace period from now on, like a month or the like (really, they gave us just 7 days to migrate our OPML? What was that hurry?), so at least we can properly migrate, send an email and a warning pop up on the plex clients (web, mobile, TV, etc.) in order to take some actions, not just an entry in a forum, so at least they will make sure all people using plex last month got warn they are dropping podcasts (and the services on the future they will drop because aren’t profitable enough).

On the other hand, I wonder who is using games, tidal, or others paid-aside services and see if they are more people than people using podcasts, or the new discover thing, I also wonder when they finally include ads in our own media or another crap because of their profit.

Really, I couldn’t be more upset. I don’t know other people, but when I’m paying for something, I hate to be treated like this. Removing services I was using without prior warning make me feel completely scammed, so say the least.

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119

Just realized I can still export my OPML file, what I cannot do is export my family members respective OPMLs, because they cannot see the XML information on the media thus they cannot see the token.
Entering into their session and using the token I used to download my opml, leaves a blank page like this

imagen
imagen969×198 8.18 KB

I wonder if it had been working at all, or if they even though on Plex Pass users when some brilliant brain decided to take down podcasts.

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120

Went to bed yesterday and wanted to listen to a podcast via Sonos but Podcasts was missing from the sources. Now I had to find out that this feature was discontinued… Podcasts in Plex were the best way to listen to podcasts on Sonos without having to use AirPlay. Really bad job at communicating this to the costumers…

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121

The wife used it all the time. It was essentially the best option for listening to podcasts on multiple devices.

Dropping Podcasts and adding a crippled and almost useless watchlist, and a Discover feature designed to point people away from Plex, don’t seem to be the brightest moves.

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122

I think you really hit the nail on the head that one of the key sellingpoints for Plex was how it enabled us to curate our libraries, and with podcasts it moved a step forward to being a one stop shop for that.

Now, not only is it turning away from being the one platform for all media needs, but it’s more and more looking to take curation away from us.

It’s sad that the platform used to be such an interesting use of technology to empower users. Now it’s just turning into just another uninteresting broadcaster of ads.

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123

What a terrible decision. Why are Web Shows and podcasts being bundled together like this? Totally different use cases.

I get the feeling Plex is driving development efforts based entirely on usage metrics. In a vacuum this would be a good thing, but in the real world it doesn’t tell the story. They’re curtailing functionality enjoyed by a key demographic, or introducing features that are loathed by this demographic - power users.

I’m a single user, but I’ve recruited over 50 other people to the platform. I happen to know that I’m the only one of those ~50 people who use the podcast feature, so looking at the metrics it doesn’t make sense to continue developing this. However, if I choose to switch to another platform, because Plex continues to ignore my needs, I can say confidently that at least 90% of my 50 users will follow me away from Plex.

It seems like every time I use the product there’s another annoyance to deal with, either an unwanted feature or a missing feature. It’s adding up.

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124

In case you missed it… they killed this too a few months ago.

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125

Dear PLEX, I’m super disappointed that you removed podcasts. For the record podcast worked 95% for me, which is darn close to perfect IMO. Maybe some users had a more difficult experience. But heck, read the forums and you’ll realize some users can’t even setup a proper
PLEX instance never-mind successfully enjoy other features like ‘podcasts’. From what I read PLEX doesn’t want to waste any more time fixing these issues and would prefer to focus on video. Sad to say that PLEX was my go to all day everyday, and to start my ride to work, but guess what…podcast are a bit safer while operating a vehicle than streaming video.

Why did you have to remove podcast? Why couldn’t you have just left it working the way it was?
Just keep it running ‘as-is’ and stop development on it…and leave a stupid ‘warning’ just like you did about canceling podcasts.

They added ‘discovery’ so we have easier access to other streaming platforms within one app, the PLEX app. But they removed podcast…forcing some user to leave the PLEX app to stream podcast elsewhere, but it seems a bit counter productive to me. And now I’m looking into other apps to do just that. I hate to admit it but, Dear PLEX your not the only game in town and could be losing a valued customer along with family and friends because of these podcast cancellations.

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