Plex needs an Upgrade Price (suggestion)

General Discussions
1

I have been using the free version of Plex. I want to go Premium but I’m not sure really what it buys me. A few good features but are they worth $150? With that I want to try Premium for a year, and then if I like it, I will buy lifetime but…
Then it’s $40 + $150 (assuming no increase in price).
How about an upgrade price for people with year subscriptions?
(Has this already been discussed?)

Thanks,
JedK

2

You can try it for a month or 2.

3

@spikemixture said:
You can try it for a month or 2.

I don’t get your reply

4

@JedK1 said:

@spikemixture said:
You can try it for a month or 2.

I don’t get your reply

You can get the same features as the lifetime pass with the monthly pass @ $4.99/month I believe.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288566-What-is-Plex-Pass-

5

@Elijah_Baley said:

@JedK1 said:

@spikemixture said:
You can try it for a month or 2.

I don’t get your reply

You can get the same features as the lifetime pass with the monthly pass @ $4.99/month I believe.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288566-What-is-Plex-Pass-

Yep that’s it.

try it for 1 or 2 months then decide to go lifetime!

6

What do you think are the best features added for upgrading?

7

Personally I bought the lifetime subscription to support a program I use and like.

I dislike subscription and will buy a lifetime subscription over paying monthly or annually every time for product I regularly use.

8

@JedK1 said:
What do you think are the best features added for upgrading?

Personally I find zero “features” of Plex Pass to be particularly important. I bought my Plex Pass to support Plex not to add anything the free Plex does not have. The only thing I basically take advantage of is the Plex Pass only sections of these forums. Being able to post there makes me feel so “special.”

Plex Pass does add a few things that I can see being useful for many like the premium music libraries and the “home” features for better handling of multiple users locally. But I just do not need those as I am the only user in my home and I do not use Plex for music.

The access to early releases I actually see as more negative than positive as it turns the Plex Pass people into beta testers where we pay to test software but that is optional and I mostly opt out of early releases until the software has been out long enough to show that there are not serious problems. I usually wait about a week after release and if no serious bug are reported then I install the latest Plex Pass release of the server.

The new DVR feature would be a real great feature for me but I cannot receive any OTA or cable signals so even that feature is unimportant for me.

9

@JedK1 said:
What do you think are the best features added for upgrading?

I posted the following reply to a similar question several months ago. Re-posting here with updates based on new/removed features.

Gracenote sonic fingerprinting

  • For popular music, I encountered about as many (but different) metadata errors using Gracenote as I did with the basic libraries and Last.fm. It took about the same amount of work to correct the errors with each service, although the Premium libraries took away some of the ability to fix an incorrect match. When I try to do so, it never gives more than one possible match, which is the one I’m trying to correct, so what’s the point? The Basic libraries are actually better in this regard.
  • Both services are absolutely horrible at matching classical music.
  • I eventually put in the effort to fix the ID3 tags embedded in my music files, and took every step to minimize any dependence on Last.fm OR Gracenote.

Better artwork, bios, album reviews

  • “Better” is subjective. Different artwork, definitely. “Better” is up to you. Probably more choices with the Premium libraries.
  • The artist biographies offered in Premium libraries are definitely longer and more thorough, but I rarely read them.
  • With regard to album reviews, after reading a few reviews that were rather negative, I realized that I have no interest in reading album reviews for albums I already own. I already know whether I like it - I bought it. So why bother reading what someone else thinks? I ended up requesting an option to not download album reviews, which was eventually added.

Vevo videos

* This is nice, and I use it frequently. (Vevo discontinued the service of providing videos)

Lyricfind Lyrics

  • This is kind of fun to play with, but, much like Gracenote and Last.FM metadata, I’ve found that Lyricfind has a lot of not-quite-accurate lyrics, or not-quite-accurate timings on timed lyrics. If I have time, and am particularly bothered by it, I end up adding a local lyrics file (which still requires Plex Pass for it to appear).

Plex Mix

  • I have not had occasion to use this. The ability to create playlists came first, and I use that heavily, so I have not felt the need to try Plex Mix.

Mood mixes

  • Moods come from Gracenote. They’re correctable in Plex, but, again, I rely more on my playlists, so I haven’t put in the effort. Like the rest of Gracenote’s services, I find them unreliable. As one example, I selected the “Happy” mood. Among the tracks it selected was a song called “I Count the Tears” by The Drifters about a guy lamenting his lying, cheating ex-girlfriend. Gracenote thinks that’s “Happy.” I don’t use Moods.

Stream Trailers/Extras

  • I only have a couple dozen movies, so I don’t use this feature much.

Cloud Sync, Mobile Sync, Camera Upload, Plex Home

  • I don’t use these features, or only play with them out of curiosity or to help others troubleshoot.

So, over time, my use of the added features of Premium music libraries has boiled down to Vevo videos Lyricfind Lyrics. If it were me, I would not feel like I’m missing much if I could not use Premium libraries. Like Spikemixture and Elijah Bailey, I bought the Plex Pass (back when it was $75) primarily to support the product, rather than for extra features.

I do like getting early access, and at least the appearance of having some earlier impact on design choices.