Plex's dim future

General Discussions
1

I’ve been a paying customer of Plex for almost a decade and I am extremely dissatisfied with the direction of the product.

With each new “feature” released, it’s increasingly clear you do not respect your paying customers. Admins are your customers and you sold us a media server. We should have control over that server. But instead we get social feature after feature that we don’t want and have no control over. Or crappy “free” titles on your streaming service that just appear for our users.

Yes our users. Users you would like to think are yours. But the only reason you have them at all is because admins brought them to Plex. For the large part, those users are on one server. And if that admin moved to another media server tomorrow, those users will never use Plex again. You have no retention of those users because the only reason they use Plex at all is because of the server. No one’s gonna stick around for your social features or D-tier streaming titles!

Each feature you add is automatically enabled for every user and there’s no server-level control. You’ve effectively stolen the users admins brought to Plex and cut off admins from any kind of control.

It’s obvious you’re chasing a pivot into a social network or streaming service of some kind (make up your mind!), in some misguided bid to be the next Hot Startup or drive “engagement”.

All while the feature requests in “Feature Suggestions” languish. It’s obvious your entire product organization is working for these new “social” or “streaming” initiatives with minimal support and resources assigned to making features requested by your paying customers.

Is your goal to drive engagement and raise a billion dollars, or do you want to actually provide value to the people who gave you money?

If you keep going down this road, you won’t have any users to sell ads to.

3

Hi there

First of all a disclaimer: I do NOT represent Plex, so the following are my thoughts only!

While I do understand your frustration, let’s look at this from a helicopter perspective:

Not so, and admin features are been implemented on PMS regularly, like the most resent one, which is the NFO agent

Please realize, that Plex has two legs to stand on, namely their streaming services and PMS

Even though you might have a point in that those users only came onboard due to you, as soon as they get a Plex account they are Plex users!

That is purely speculation on your part, and I know for a fact it’s not true for a lot of Plex users

Correct, since the user belongs to Plex, and not you, and they might have either multiple servers, or/and is also using Plex Streaming Services

Again, the users belongs to Plex, and when Plex add some new stuff, it’s by default enabled for all users in most cases, but also can be disabled

I have no idea about the financial stuff, but since Plex also is doing a lot of work on their online services, I would suspect that their income is divided between Plex Pass and the online services

Neither you nor I know the numbers, so again purely speculation on your part

5

I feel the OP’s pain, and I get a lot of what he’s saying. Also agree with a large part of your rebuttal.

I firmly believe one part is a hard truth though… The very moment another company comes along and makes sharing as accessible as Plex does, I’m pretty sure they’re going to lose all of my users. And yes, I believe they’re mine. They will go where I take them. :slight_smile:

6

Not that I’m not hearing you here, just stated the point from what I think is the Plex stand on users

7

I think if that’s all you can find for an example of a new feature for PMS, then it’s pretty obvious where the majority of resources at the company are allocated.

Yes, I realize how tech companies work and who owns what on a technical and legal level. I wouldn’t have made this post otherwise, would I? This is the only forum in which I am allowed to give my feedback so I’m using it as a paying customer to voice my dissatisfaction.

I am complaining because I am a customer and my users are only there for my server and Plex could easily differentiate between streaming services users vs. server users and allow server controls for the later for admins. Why don’t they do that?

Just want to point out this is also speculation. An ad-supported free streaming service having equal revenue with PMS? Maybe … but likely not.

But Plex as solely an ad-supported free streaming and/or social network? The market for that is pretty saturated, whereas there are basically three media servers and they’re the most popular. Would Plex survive in that market without PMS? Solely as a streaming service and/or social network? I really doubt that.

The admins who are paying customers must make up a significant income stream or they would have announced plans to sunset the product. And instead of adding features to PMS regularly most of the features they announce are for streaming/social.

8

Yeah I’ve said many times previously that I’d bet most of the users Plex has gotten is because of being told they can watch content from a friend’s Plex server. How many users are signing up to solely watch Plex’s streaming content? Even if they are, I’d venture to guess that they heard from a friend, etc. that you can watch movies and TV shows on Plex (not realizing that most friends mean from a Plex server, not the Plex hosted content).

10

I think this is exactly right and Plex is using all these users as a built-in user base on which they can test new products, but if they anger their admins customers enough, they could see a mass migration to other media servers and then their active users will dwindle.

11

Version 1.43.2.10687 Ref: Plex Media Server - #706 by PlexReleaser

  • (Filters) Add filter for Atmos (PM-5173)
  • (Filters) Add filter for audio layout (PM-5118)
  • (Filters) Add filters for video, audio, and subtitle codecs (PM-5117)
  • (Metadata) Add support for RottenTomatoes audience and average ratings to Nfo parser (PM-5176)
  • (Metadata) Detect Dolby Atmos (PM-4004)
  • (Metadata) Read ‘set’ tags for collections in the NFO parser (PM-4849)
  • (QNAP) Generate unsigned QNAP packages (PM-5150)
  • (Shield) Added server management screen (PM-2736)

Version 1.43.1.1061 Ref: https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-media-server/30447/704

  • (Transcoding) Add support for decoding AV1 files on Windows using Intel devices. (PM-4889)
  • (Transcoding) Added support for battlemage GPUs. (PM-3178)
  • (Transcoding) Removed experimental tag from HEVC preferences and enable by default. (PM-4323)
  • Updated Web to 4.159.0

And could go on, but now you have the link to the PMS Annountments thread!

Maybe because nobody asked for that?
Please go here: https://forums.plex.tv/c/feature-suggestions

Thus why I used the word suspect

doubt that, but again speculation :slight_smile:

Well, my guess would be that if it was not a lot, Plex would not be doing this
Please remember that neither you nor I has the numbers, but Plex is not stupid!

12

You’re right, it likely isn’t equal. They probably get more revenue from the ad-supported service. In April 2024 the split was 80-20 in favour of ad-supported streaming. That might have shifted a little with the changes to plex pass pricing but I’d be very surprised if its swung significantly in the other direction.

13

Well… they get no revenue from me. Lifetime was such a good deal for such a long time that it was hard to pass up. I did it early when I started, over 10 years back. I have definitely gotten my money’s worth… and I’d suspect there’s a LOT of us in that boat.

I get that they have to make money from somewhere, especially with venture capital injections. I just wish it wasn’t at the expense of the original customer.

They didn’t plan for the future well with their original pay model.

14

Shoot, I’d even go back to paying them a (reasonable) ongoing subscription. But they would have to LISTEN to their end-users, which they obviously aren’t currently.

15

I’m aware of the release notes. I would argue that support for codecs or formats isn’t really a feature the same way many of the highly requested features in Feature Suggestions are features. Actually one of the top requested features is one that was removed: Watch Together. Releasing something like “Nested Collections” or “Continuous Autoplay” would be a feature, IMO.

I think if you’re suggesting that no one ever has requested to have admin control over streaming or social features, you’re being disingenuous.

Aha, well, having worked in the tech industry for 17 years I can tell you that companies aren’t intrinsically smart and will often drive away dedicated userbases in an attempt to “pivot” . And, unfortunately, Plex is not somehow immune to that. Especially since they’ve taken a good deal of VC money, that money doesn’t come without strings.

16

I believe I found the source for this revenue split in a Forbes article, from the CEO. That’s quite high, I would not have guessed that.

But later in the article the CEO pretty much admits they don’t pay as much on user acquisition as other free streaming services:

“Some services are paying insane amounts on user acquisition,” said Valory. “I think our better opportunity is to help other subscriptions bundle and create discounts for end users. We don’t need to take a dime of that; we will make our money on advertising and helping people get the content they want.”

Which seems like they only get that 80% ad revenue because they have such a large userbase from admins.

17

Well, in short I disagree, and what most users asked for, and as such prioritized

Have you checked the link I provided?

All I can say here is that I match that+ with 40 years :slight_smile:

18

Again, speculation!

You are running away on your own world spear speculations, but fail IMHO to face the fact that not all Plex users are like you, nor might have the same demands

19

Yes, it’s actually the same page I linked to.

There have been two major feature requests on the “Top” ordering of Feature Suggestions that have requested disabling of social and/or streaming services at the server-level.

Both original requests mention server-level controls; both were implemented only as user controls. For you to say that there is no significant desire from admins for admin controls is incorrect; it’s just that Plex ignores that part of the feature request and only implements the user-level control.

Also have you ever been on the Plex reddit? This is a frequent topic there.

I made a reasonable argument: the CEO said they’re not paying as much for user acquisition as other streaming services and that’s probably because admins brought in a lot of users. Why do you think they don’t spend much on user acquisition? If you had an opposing argument that might be more compelling than attacking my suggestions as unpopular. Which as I showed above, other Plex admins have requested.

Yeah, that’s why I used the word “seems”.

20

Man this says so much lol

21

So on both suggestions they asked for admin or user disabling, and Plex implemented user can do so

22

Yes, I’m aware of each request and how it was worded and how Plex implemented it.

But you’ve been arguing this entire thread that my desire for server-level controls is unpopular or fringe, and that’s simply not true. Admins have asked for them and it’s a frequent topic. And for you to assert that is not the case is simply false.

It makes me think you are either unfamiliar with the Plex admin community or are being disingenuous because server-level controls have been discussed frequently in Plex admin communities.

For reference this is you Linking to Feature Suggestions and implying that no one asked for it. But they did.

And here you assert that my position is unpopular as a “fact”. But that’s speculation and I have actual popular feature suggestions that specifically requested server-level controls.

23

A big reason I use Plex is because I control my content and I get my content without ads. As a man, I can’t use a public bathroom without standing in front of an ad telling me to buy something. I love the fact that on my two servers, I see whatever I want without ads.

As far as Streaming, I get that is a potential source of revenue that Plex needs but the market is oversaturated with streaming choices. This is going to cause major competitors to start buying each other up.