Plex has made it incredibly easy to access content that you own, legally, to be able to watch it on all devices. However, when the company decided to venture into a new design, what they failed to understand, is that alienating a particular group of its users will only hurt the brand.. It’s new application for Roku. The application looks gorgeous and it reminds me of the Plex app on Kodi.
The app only allows you to watch video. The app used to allow you to listen to music now this is left to just PlexAmp. This app still needs significant improvements to make it the best overall music experience that the company and visions. I would highly suggest for them to team up with Roon music to really make an amazing Plexamp 2.0.
I love the animation of each content that you own, and the ability to get to the FAST content that Plex is added onto the service in the last couple of years.
The big Takeaway for me is the ability not to listen to music on Roku anymore. The app for music as I just stated is not the very best and perhaps teaming up with a like-minded company like Roon will allow the company to envision a better experience from different perspectives. Med is so important and right now Plex and lacks the ability to fully understand your music and instead uses this incredibly inaccurate sonic system that doesn’t connect you fully well to your music in the way that you would want. Teaming up with another company will allow for Plex to really expand on music. Otherwise, the Roku app, which will soon go live to all users is a decent but much needed upgrade.
What are people’s thoughts regarding a partnership to expand music and the fact that there’s no music part of the Plex experience on Roku? I fully understand that the new Plex app on mobile doesn’t include music and what they’re trying to do is make it more universal but there’s a mobile app for music there’s not for TV at least not announced by the company.
Hey this topic is about your dislike of removing music from the app is it not. I appreciate you may feel changes are arbitrary but to be clear music is not in any of the TV apps either. I’m willing to bet there are other things you actually may have wanted changed from the old app.
Having a mass feedback of every dislike of new app isn’t as useful as you think it will be (and ones already exist). that is why i changed the title to be more specific since 99% of what you brought up is about music.
@Bigwheel, I’d hardly characterize the changes as “arbitrary.” There has to be method to the madness, I, for sure, don’t follow the logic.
One of the big attractions to start using Plex for me several years ago was a completely unified experience, for video, audio and still media. My household uses almost exclusively Roku streaming devices. As near as I can tell, I will no longer be able to stream musing through them at all. I don’t see this as a move forward. I don’t want to have to switch applications when I decide to stream a different type of media, or worse, change devices completely. I’m going to have to evaluate from server to clients how I’m going to handle media going forward.
I’m gonna be a tad blunt… and this is not directed at you personally, @BigWheel.
I don’t agree with much of what’s touted in that press release. At least on my Roku clients (nearly all of my clients,) it’s quite easy to spin through to find unwatched content, content by name, and so forth. The library structures are already customized to specific media types. Yes, I understand that I am probably a small use case in that the vast majority of access time is from Roku streaming devices.
Personally, if this new UI gets rolled out as the Roku production release BEFORE the music app and the photo app are released, that’s going to be a huge step backwards, effectively cutting my clients off from significant parts of my media server. And I greatly dislike having to exit an app, start another app, and authenticate again when I want to switch media types, especially when the same user is involved. My g/f has already given me the “WTH?” when she started the Roku Preview, and she’s one of the easiest to satisfy.
At the end of it all, it’s not my app, I am purely an app user. I have been suggesting the Plex ecosystem for some years… and may have to rethink that.
In none of the blog post did you say you’d be REMOVING music from TV apps. Your said a lot about Plexamp and splitting media into different apps, but nothing about abandoning music on TVs. From everything I’ve seen that topic has been conspicuously absent and the only comments made have been extracted by questions from users. Feels very off to me.
Actually I went through all of their blog posts since last fall and didn’t find a single mention of music being removed. Might have been in an email though.
Yeah. You could work it out if you read between the lines but it certainly wasn’t stated and it was in no way clear and to date hasn’t been clearly stated as far as I’m aware.
Our mission here at Plex is to create a global community where everyone can discover, experience, and share all of the entertainment that matters to them. At the center of that mission is our Plex app, which has evolved into the go-to entertainment platform for fans to discover movies, shows, fellow fans, and of course, what it’s like to enjoy streaming again.
That all sounds great, right? “But what about photos and music?” you ask.
Good question. Fear not, we’ve got the answer: dedicated companion apps.
As we continue to streamline the Plex app, making it more intuitive, faster, and better suited to discovery and personalization of your movie and TV experience, we will be migrating music and photos support to their own dedicated companion applications.
2025: We are planning to expand device support for Plex Photos, while deprecating music and photos playback in the primary Plex (movies & shows) application. This means that by early 2025, the Plex app will be entirely focused on the discovery of movies, shows, TV, and fellow fans.
That’s good info. Unfortunately as of right now there is no evidence of a music or photo Plex app for Roku. Roku is brightscript, so no unified code base here.
I just don’t want this new preview to become the the mainline Plex Roku app until the companion music and photo apps are available
I’m just going to say this. I have already passed this topic about music not being in the TV app. I do read (and so to other employees) other topics whether they be about discontents or praise. And those are always passed along to others who will make decisions based on that feedback. So please continue to do so
I do not mean to dismiss any of you opinions about the changes to the app or opinions about our communication of the changes to music. I pass all of it along.
But I will say again this topic is about music not being the the app any more. There already is a couple general feedback topics about lots of things ( which I read as well and pass along that feedback) if you want to post there.
I will remove any off topic replies. ( If not obvious I already have a couple times.)
Blockquote
As we transition to dedicated companion apps, we will begin phasing out support for music and photos in the Plex mobile app for iOS and Android.
It was extremely unclear whether the plans extended to other platforms. Even if you interpreted the original post to apply to all platforms, then where are the promised companion apps? Have looked on my ROK devices and can’t find them.
As I said, communication has been lacking in honesty and has been ambiguous and unclear at best. Not convinced? Here’s the official guidance for music videos that’s still in place.
And to date, unless I’ve missed it hidden in a forum topic somewhere, there has been no statement of their intent to bury support for music videos. It’s been left to us to work out the implications. Honestly, I think that’s just disgraceful and indicates a real disregard for their customers. The ability to integrate music videos into my library was one of the key factors that made me feel like a lifetime pass was worth the investment. Now they’ve stripped out the feature, haven’t had the courtesy to tell me, and haven’t even bothered updating their support pages to indicate the new reality.
Feels like they are going to remove music from TV apps with no plan to replace that functionality. Why? Why is Plex removing functionality? Feel antithetical to the whole reason we all use and pay for this software. Options and control of our own media.
Anyway, this is all pretty sad. I don’t want to be negative towards this platform. I love it and use it daily. Can we please just have a reasonable solution for this? Restore the functionality to your users. Bleh.
If they’d give us Plexamp across platforms, I could live with it. If they added music videos in Plexamp as well, I’d be happy enough (Plexamp is amazing). Would prefer if it was still the one-stop media platform that I paid for though.
Listening to music with friends on Roku yesterday I realised something that hadn’t previously occurred to me. With no music support for TVs, lyrics on the big screen become a thing of the past. I paid for that feature. It was one of the reasons I bought a lifetime pass.
