Again, you’re blaming the user here for your lack of transparency. If we’d known that the update would remove the plugin functionality, then we wouldn’t update. But it’s not spelled out, anywhere. And that’s unfortunate. I’ve only seen one…ONE mention of removing plugins functionality and that was on the Web Client, which was appreciated.
It’s the overall lack of communication that gets me. Getting rid of plugins? Ok, but Why? Just leave well enough alone. You say it takes effort to maintain it, but yet you’re actively putting effort into removing it. Why? From your own blog post you state “But don’t panic—while the Plugin Directory will soon be gone, you can still manually install plugins for the foreseeable future.” One of many dishonest statements (and an outright lie) by plex. (Yes, I’m still incredibly irked by this, despite it being announced a year ago).
Just be honest with your users for once and tell us why, the real reason why…not the “it’s only 2% that use it” excuse. If it’s about selling out, ahem making money through agreements with other providers and getting a cut of the revenue, then just come out and say it. If not, then rumors will continue to swirl and you frankly just look bad.
I used to LOVE plex, just love it. It was easy to use, simple to navigate. Now I simply abhor at the mess it’s become. The turmoil, the UI changes, the removing of features, and the “addition” of new and great features (that just aren’t). Plex lost it’s way trying to navigate the corporate world. It’s sold out…and that’s the worst part.
No one is blaming anyone here. We stated reasons for removing plugins in the blog post. You can still manually install plugins into the directory manually, but we no longer provide a UI for them to use. They can either use their own UI, or not require one. Just because you don’t like our reasons and justifications doesn’t make it dishonest. However, this has gone far off topic from the original content of this thread, and any further comments of this nature will be removed.
@darcilicious@drzoidberg33@DaveBinM I will reiterate what the topic is about and why we are as a group of paying customers so pissed off… you (Plex) took away one of the most important and marketed features without a suitable replacement. You did this with very little if any notice, and have since given us no sense of the reasoning for the removal of the feature. We get it, you no longer use Gracenote, but that’s not the reason the feature is gone. That was a choice you made, and one that we would assume you had some foresight of. If you knew it was coming, why did you not plan to have the replacement ready??? Is it because you guys screwed up and didn’t plan ahead? Is it because at the last minute they upped the usage fees and you couldn’t justify it? Is it something else? Just give us something more than “a replacement will be ready when it’s ready”.
Beyond that, I’m pissed that I continue to pay you for a feature which was the one and only reason I paid for the product in the first place. Will your company be offering paying users a rebate for every month that you continue to fail to deliver a real replacement?
One of my concerns, is that the various apps won’t be ready for the new music features (Plex mix, hopefully returning among those new improvements) and we’ll be waiting another “temprorary” length of time until they’re updated.
Maybe @DaveBinM or @drzoidberg33 can at least share that amount of infomation without breaking the Plex code of silence
Yeah… I used an emoji. For communication and intent.
I’m old enough to remember the awesomeness that was Moodlogic back in 1998. The Winamp/Moodlogic combination remains the zenith of automated playlist generation IMO.
Moodlogic was ahead of its time. It designed musical “fingerprints” and solicited feedback from their users to be as granular as they desired in reporting how individual songs and artists made them feel. I believe they had developed over 3 million fingerprints before they shut down.
IIRC there were issues both within the management team and fundraising. Many of us were devastated when it died. The tech was sold to Allmusic and then to Macrovision which used the tech for AMG Tapestry B2B products, pretty much killing any hope of a revival.
Anyway, I’ve tried all sorts of alternatives over the years and none were comparable to Moodlogic.
Until Plex Mix came along…
I really liked Plex Mix. I still think Moodlogic was more accurate, but Plex Mix was quite close, a new entry worthy of consideration and financial support for an actively-developed offering.
I share others’ frustration over the length of time so far between killing Plex Mix and the “New Thing” to be revealed.
But I haven’t lost faith in Plex. I’ve been using Plex for about 5 years (I think) and like it very much overall. I do wish more time and resources would be spent on the Music side of Plex and I couldn’t care less about Tidal, Podcasts and News features. I use the Movies and TV features quite often and continue to believe Plex is the best overall media solution for my needs.
I have waited the better part of 20 years for a Moodlogic replacement. I can wait longer. Forewarned, though, I have pretty high expectations for the “New Thing” when it is released!
Well, Plex, I’ve gotta say that it can’t be too hard to bring back Plex Mix with MusicBrainz … after all, I’m using Jellyfin for all my track related music mixes now (which, by the way, doesn’t make the same mix every time, either … it’s almost always a unique playlist). It’s totally open source, you could just go to their Github and replicate what they’ve done.
Lifetime Pass here, and I’m also pretty disappointed with the sudden removal of features I used every day.
Pleaseeeeeee have plex mix back available again. It’s literally the only reason why i just bought plex pass and started trying Plex. Google play music and Itunes mix feature are subpar and not up to date.
So you remove features without replacement?
Why you don’t lower the price then?
And why you don’t feel obliged to give a comment that shows us your plans? This gives a really arrogant impression of you
I’m just going to +1 here that I too spent a decent amount of time today chasing down where my Plex Mix had gone. I mostly use other services for music now, but recently returned to maintaining my local library on Plex.
I understand that features dependent on third-party providers inevitably may come and go. Obviously relationships with those providers can and do fall through.
The root of the issue here is that this was never communicated clearly. I skim the regular Plex announcement emails whenever they come in. They always contain plenty of hyping of new features and photos of Barkley, etc. But apparently they’re not changelogs, since a quick search of my archive turned up zero hits for “Plex Mix”.
I know feature removals aren’t sexy, but they’re important information for those of us who maintain a server. Plex is a good product, there’s no need to whitewash the comms. Just tell us what’s going on. And put up a FAQ article on your support site that I can find on Google faster than it took me to find this thread.
Maybe it’s time to use that email list to send out a mea culpa…
I apologize for not communicating what was going on here better. I’m a huge user of Plex for music (more than video) and I care deeply about our functionality there.
We’ve been working internally to tweak our artist radio functionality to allow starting from a track, and we’re going to be ingesting additional metadata over the coming months which might (emphasis on might) allow the specific track nuances to affect the station.
(For me personally, artist radio offers better and richer functionally, and the track specificity of Plex Mix didn’t really work super well in many cases. Understood not everyone agrees.)
@elan Artists change over time, so how exactly are you going to decide what type of music I’m trying to get when I start a mix from Taylor Swift, is it Country, or is it Hip-Hop, or is it Pop?
You say the Plex Mix didn’t work in “many cases”, well if that was truly the case, you wouldn’t have had this kind of backlash over it’s removal, you would have had threads complaining about the quality of the Plex Mix in the first place.
From the sounds of it, you’ve lost one source of metadata (gracenote) and are trying to replace it with something less than what you sold us on (additional metadata - could this possibly be OUR listening habits to build your own graph?).
The saddest part is that it sounds like because it works for you, that’s all that matters. And to that, you’re correct, I don’t agree, and I doubt very much that anyone in this thread agrees either.
Artist Radio is the only “radio” I don’t use since we lost Plex Mix. It just doesn’t work for me.
I know the “Radio” works better (from other threads) if you have rated tracks and albums and artists, but I never even considered doing that previously. Just pick a tune and ask for a Plex Mix .
Tracks now have mood and styles associated with them, so maybe there’s still hope for this temporarily unavailable feature.
Naw, that’s a glass-half-empty view. The new metadata is best-in-the-world (powers AllMusic) and I’ve personally been wanting to get my hands on it for the better part of a decade.
Not true, I literally just explained that we were doing work which could help track radio!
It personalizes it, but it’s totally not needed; as long as you haven’t disabled the Popular Track metadata, it should do quite well.
We have some quasi-experimental support for mood/style radios, which seem to work pretty well.
@elan Sorry, but the level of communication with your users here has left us feeling pretty “glass half empty” for quite some time now, I’m not going to take the blame for that one, I think a lot of us feel this way.
Nitpicking your answers isn’t going to help me reach you, I’ll only restate that:
The Plex Mix is obviously important to everyone here,
You’ve indicated that in many cases Plex Mix didn’t work, but don’t qualify that to a crowd of users who would vehemently disagree with you, except to say you understand we disagree,
We felt betrayed when we paid money with this feature being one of, if not the most important, factors… only to have it removed with no clear replacement,
You made us wait the better part of a year for an answer, only to hear that we might (emphasis on might) get some functionality back in a few months.
We are your paying customers, dedicated ones who loved your product, and we deserved better than this, way better.
To put a finer point on how in-effective the alternatives to Plex Mix are… I tried them during parties a few times, and found I had to spend time every few songs having to curate with my phone/computer because of how broad radio/artist selections were, rather than enjoying the time with my friends. It was embarrassing. I never had to do this with the Plex Mix.
