I only made an account to connect to my friend’s library. Having to do that was already a red flag(Why would that connection need to go through a middleman?) Now, you’ve decided that you own and get to charge rent on his content and my internet connection. Will be using a free alternative(I mean, one that hasn’t been hijacked by a corporation.)
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Time to move to Jellyfin!
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I’m extremely annoyed about this. First they announce that Plex Pass was being increased by a ridiculous amount, and those of us that were fine with the free version had nothing to worry about. Now, after the price increase, you take away the one feature that nearly all of us actually want.
Nah, that’s not cool at all. Jelllyfin here we come.
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You wouldn’t have been affected by the change, because your friend already had a Plex Pass.
It doesn’t. plex.tv only acts as a kind of “phone book”, i.e. a “DDNS provider” and also supplies the cryptographic certificates for all involved devices.
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$2 bucks a month minimum (Remote Pass) to basically perform a DNS lookup - a VERY basic service that used to be free.
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My response was not intended to defend the price increase.
I was merely pointing out that the data don’t go through plex.tv (unless you use the plex relay connection).
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Which makes things even worse, in that this is a service Plex already provides FOR FREE, for people that stream in-house. When you log into your account on any client, Plex simply sends you a list of IPs for your client to try to connect to, and a security certificate to do so securely. If you are connecting locally, it uses this certificate. If you connect remotely, it uses the same certificate. So there is no “infrastructure costs!” reason for a remote fee.
Not that Otto is defending it. I’m just pointing out in general that company costs isn’t the reason.
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All you need is a matchmaking server to point user A’s IP at user B. As was said, a DDNS lookup.
You could do this with a any relay client, simpler than a bittorrent tracker or IRC relay. This should never be a feature that costs money.
Someone is going to wrap up a Jellyfin Sync combination that uses a free anonymous relay to make a friends list, and then that’s that. Server costs for millions of users would be equivalent to a chat room from the 90s.
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And you think the software writes and maintains itself? Coding does not cost money?
Indeed, they have 100+ staff.
Those staff are not programmers.
They are marketers and brand specialists who are selling your watchlist entries and your eyes to ad partners via the On Demand and Rental Content.
The Media Server portion of the company could have been sustainable, but they raised VC funding to expand, and after a ton of terrible features to over-promise new user adoption like Plex Arcade, we wound up here. You aren’t the customer, you’re the product.
Is this change affecting all of my multimedia data on my Plex server on my NAS? I mean: I’m only streaming audio content (all of which has been ripped off of my CDs).
Streaming audio-only media and photos remotely is still free.
But you have to use Plexamp now, instead of the regular Android or iOS app, as the latter no longer support music or photos.
Plexamp is also freely usable, though some of its features require a Plex Pass (but that hasn’t changed since it went free in July 2023).
Please see the FAQ section at the end of this blog post: https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/
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Thank you @OttoKerner - I’ve already switched from Plex to Plexamp for when I’m streaming from remote.
When in my LAN, I still can use Plex for audio and video streaming (on my laptop), which remains free - correct?
What is “Plex” for you? Do you mean the Plex for Windows/Mac/Linux app?
There are no changes so far for these apps.
Plexamp is also available for Desktop computers, btw.
Wow, how did you manage to get hold of the list of all their staff? And their finances (presumably going back many years)?
Source “trust me bro?”
Yes, I was referring to the Plex app - not the server.
I moved over to Plexamp for audio streaming already months ago.
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