We keep complaining about problems with the media server. It crashes now, downloads is a lousy replacement for sync, and instead of getting what we want, we get more access to streaming services we already have access to.
Just today I saw this article on Android authority that sums it up. The majority of your users just want our media services to work. We are the ones that pay the bill. We are the ones that bought lifetime passes so you’d have more money for growth based on having faith in your vision. We feel like we’ve been sold out.
Not too much of a surprise considering how poor the Plex offerings have been so far in Movies & TV and Live TV. I mean, the quoted 40,000 pieces of content on Movies & TV is about equal in size to the claimed sites of some Plex users (it’s is about equivalent to 50TB of storage), and yet the large majority of Plex’s content is honestly garbage, IMO.
Hopefully, Plex users will continue to use Plex mainly for local content and the Plex company gets back to doing what it has done so well in the past: local content.
Sounds like corporate leadership is choosing a direction of trying to make Plex in to just another streaming platform, in a market already filled with them, but one that doesn’t have as much content to offer.
And it would be trading on the Plex name, counting on the userbase that’s not there for that kind of thing.
To use a relevant analogy, it’s like a bad movie reboot that uses the same name but with very little else in common with the successful movie it’s named after.
The press release mentions, “With more than 25 million registered users globally, Plex is one of the most widely available ad-supported video on demand and live TV offerings in the industry with users in 193 countries.”
So that fits with my sense that they’re basically buying the userbase just for the marketing number, without caring to actually work for that base.
