Is Plex in Trouble?

General Discussions
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I came to the forums today to find a way to disable something that was showing up on my home screen called “The Upside Down.” Lately, it feels like a constant battle to keep the layout in the Plex applications from changing, and it seems like every few weeks I’m dismissing another notification about integration with some other streaming service. It has a very “advertising” feel to it that I don’t care for, and there’s a similar sentiment in many other posts in the forums.

Clicking around the site, I landed back at the homepage and noticed that almost every bit of copy describes Plex as an app for “free TV and movies.” One blurb even calls Plex “a free movie website.” I had to scroll quite far down before I found any reference to “personal media,” which only gets one section way way below the fold, and there’s not a single mention of the Plex Media Server until you reach the Downloads list at the very bottom of the page.

So I find this all a bit odd, considering I pay monthly for Plex. How is the actual software not worth any description or placement on the homepage? With all the references to other streaming services and how heavy the ad copy seems to be leaning on the use case of “free TV & movies,” I have to wonder if Plex is in trouble? Or maybe there are some big changes happening behind the scenes that the public isn’t privy to?

Equally concerning is the fact that music (or rather, the word “songs”) is only mentioned once on the plex.tv homepage, just below the “personal media” section, though I know music playback hasn’t ever been the main focus of the primary Plex apps. Still, Plexamp is a real gem, and beloved/well received by music nerds in just about every online community where it comes up. It makes Plex a killer app for anyone with a large collection of music on their server, especially for stuff that isn’t available on the big streaming services. I’d pay the monthly fee for Plexamp alone at this point; there’s nothing like it.

I’ve put many, many hours into organizing my media collection in Plex Media Server over the years, and I still mostly have a good experience with it.

But if the plex.tv homepage is any indication, it kinda feels like the “personal media” side of Plex is being quietly abandoned. So should I be worried about what’s going to happen to the Plex Media Server in the near future? Do I need to start working out a way to migrate all my library metadata into some other software? Is there perhaps some kind of split coming, with the Plex Media Server suite of apps being spun off into something separate from this new “Plex” as a meta-streaming service?

How does the original Plex that I know and love fit into the business roadmap nowadays? What is happening? Is anything happening? Have there been any official statements about this bizarre new direction?

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that is content from a server’s movie library . it is the Holloween seasonal hub. You can disable the seasonal hub in Manage Libraries Settings

Plex_🔊
Plex_🔊1137×440 101 KB

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If you are worried that might be the best move for you.

If Plex has big changes in mind, they will not tip their hand. But despite the change in marketing messaging, I am not particularly worried. We see work continuing on the server and client software, with new builds released all the time. I don’t think they’d be spending so much effort on things like the transcoder if they were about to abandon personal media.

Even if they did make a business decision to de-emphasize personal media I think there’s a really good chance that PMS would get frozen into a usable state. Look how long they kept PMP around.

@BigWheel I wish the Plex settings would not hide these critical controls until you mouse over the row. During this Upside Down time I have seen countless posts repeating the advice you just gave and so often, the reply is, “but I don’t see those settings” and the the helper has to explain how the necessary controls may be invisible, depending on client, until you point at them. Hidden controls with no affordance are just … not good.

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I understand the worry. Plex does seem to be moving away from the personal-media-serving side, going over to Netflix-like video offerings. However, I think it’s more for financial stability/survival, rather than a change in priorities. Plex Pass is their only other source of money, and that has limited sales potential. The “I own lots of media and need a program to serve it to myself and am willing to pay for this service” market is already pretty small and probably at the saturation mark. Especially as they offer one-time purchase life-time passes, while still needing to provide server power (authentication, relay, software support/updates, metadata, DVR guide subscription, etc), they likely needed a new income stream.

Transitioning over to ad-supported free video content to supplement their income is a logical next step, to me. They already have the video-player infrastructure on many platforms. So it makes sense (still sad to hear though), that they might want to emphasize the content that makes them more money.

As for the lack of mention on the personal-media side, it could be for a few reasons.

  • Primarily, defense. To try to stay away from the “Plex is for piracy” label that has pursued Kodi for a long time. Streaming boxes pre-configured with Kodi are all-but-banned on online markets, because the movie cos made a huge stink about how Kodi was ONLY usable for piracy abetting. So adding legitimate streaming options not only gets money to themselves, but supports movie companies as well.
  • Word of mouth. If you are the kind of person to need a personal media library manager, Plex is likely to already be on your mind.
  • Money. I imagine Plex Pass sales aren’t as much income as streaming (a lot of the base features are free already), so there isn’t much of a point to advertise a feature that brings in less income.
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Will pass along that feedback. Thanks.

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Completely agree with your summary.

These days, having your own media server to stream your own content is a very niche and small market compared to streaming services etc, I really can’t imagine there is much money to be made from it.

IMHO they have way too many clients they need to support, must cost a fair bit, and their quality really does lack I suspect due to this - personally, although it would be hard for us users initially, I would rather they support fewer clients but with much better quality AND support.

The main reason I went with Plex Pass is Plexamp, that’s a gem they really need to sing about.

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Maybe one day they’ll separate the Plex Media Server from the Plex Streaming Service.

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I’m waiting for the day when I can pay a nominal fee (that never EVER increases… say… $10/mo) and stream any and every TV show/movie/song ever created in max resolution.

Until that happens, Plex/Emby FTW

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I agree completely with @kolby64. Like so many, I absolutely love PLEX but am concerned about the model slowly changing to the point where personal media is no longer easily consumed.

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I wouldn’t be worried, they have done major enhancements to the personal media server space over the last 6-12 months, I think we are safe.

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Directly related to the author’s concerns, it has become increasingly annoying to share my Plex libraries with friends because of this move to online services. I’ve shared my library with three friends in the past few weeks and all three of them had trouble finding my server among the barrage of bs streaming content that is prominent when installing a fresh client. It’s a chore for everyone to manually go and “unpin” or “hide” or “rearrange” all the default online streaming content that feels more like advertisements than features. I’ve been a lifetime member for at least 10 years, I’ve never considered moving away except in the past few months. It’s just annoying to manually opt-out of all this stuff after every client login or user creation.

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Quoted for truth. The onboarding experience for invited users is tough. All they care about are watching the legitimate home movies I shared with them, but they are finding it difficult to navigate client setup.

The server admin ought to be able to configure a default home screen experience for the invited users. Plex could the offer those users access to their streaming services later… Maybe a popup on a subsequent client startup.

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It also appears to be impossible to get the attention of Plex devs in these forums. I’ve seen 3+ threads on a Live TV EPG bug and no one from Plex has bothered to comment on them. There are threads asking for AC4 support (required for ATSC 3.0 TV channels), where the only response is “We’re working on it”. The threads are at least 2 years old now.

The lack of support on these forums is starting to make me consider moving along to Emby or Jellyfin.

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@BanzaiInstitute Same with me. I have to (usually) walk everyone I invite to my Plex server through unpinning all the default junk that Plex adds because they can’t find my media.

It’s just the writing on the wall I suppose. More and more companies are turning towards subscription bases models because 1-off payments aren’t paying the bills or just greed in action.

Unless people are blind, Plex has been caring less and less about local media and are focusing their efforts on streaming their own content and getting money from the ads they’re serving up. Once they sign some significant contracts and get all ‘legitimate’, I think they’ll limit media streaming to the account you’re signed into on the server or will disable streaming to friends.

I pointed this out before. If a friend is on their Plex client and searches for a movie/TV show on my server, it shows all the possible ways to access that content. Paid and free. People (when given the choice) will go the free route every time. Hollywood studios aren’t going to be cool with that so Plex will have to do away with what made them famous because $$$ from Hollywood is greater than money from us.

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I hate they added that crap. HOME screen should always be your media, not some pinned streaming crap and making you have to pin your own libraries to even see them on HOME. Moronic.

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While I agree with the hate for all the junk Plex adds, you have to look at it from their perspective. If they want to stay a viable company they have to look for ways to continue to make money. It is a business and I’m sure we are a very niche crowd that doesn’t bring in a whole lot of revenue.

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Would love to have separate apps. A app dedicated to Plex Media Server for personal media (No bloatware, Just a server), & A free ad supported streaming app that can only watch whatever Plex provides. If Plex doesn’t want to separate them, Offer users with PlexPass a app without the added bloadware/free streaming thats been added recently.

I’m pretty sure they wont separate them because chances are, The free ad supported app would most likely just wither & die without being bundled with the Server app. Wouldn’t be surprised if most of the traffic they get on the free ad streaming is from people accidentally choosing films/tv shows thinking it belongs to the server being shared to them by friends & family.

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With their introduction to their new Discovery feature, it unfortunately becomes a chicken and egg scenario where prior to Discovery, it made sense to distinguish the separate use cases for each the free tier, ad content AND a separate app dedicated to personal servers. NOW, that case can’t be made since there is now a growing number of users who have grown accustomed to Discovery and the universal Watchlist. It’s muddied the water. While it seems useful to have everything at one’s fingertips, it’s also become much more messier.

There’s no turning back from this. They might as well press on to continue their corporate deals, hopefully bringing digital licensed purchases from Vudu, Movies Anywhere and others with it, so those also make their way into the Plex ecosystem.

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Yep. Pretty much inevitable when VC money runs out so quickly. They haven’t changed their customer facing business model for over a decade, but that’s entirely on them, not us. They can’t blame the $5 per month donations to their cause if they stupidly had their $120 lifetime tier offered for far too long. Both don’t seem reasonable.

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Interesting article here about more people streaming ad-supported content than from a local media server:

https://www.aftvnews.com/plexs-local-media-server-features-are-taking-a-backseat-to-its-more-recent-ad-supported-streaming-success/

“Plex is also talking to smaller TV manufacturers about the possibility of Plex serving as the OS for TVs, according to Hancock.” - they will have to get damn better at quality control and testing if they are seriously looking at that!