Plex lays off 20% of its workforce

MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 639 points – Plex lays off 20% of its workforce amid advertising slowdown
techcrunch.com

Plex, the free streaming app, laid off approximately 20% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned, which will affect all departments, including the Personal Media teams.

“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement. “These are all wonderful people, great colleagues, and good friends. But we believe it is the right thing for the long-term health and stability of Plex.”

The streaming app gives users a single destination to upload and organize content (video, audio and photos) from their own server while also allowing them to stream it via mobile app, smart TV or desktop.

In recent years, however, Plex has invested in free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) and live TV offerings. The FAST market has become saturated as many companies have entered the space. Plus, the overall advertising industry has taken a hit, making it harder for companies to earn enough revenue.

Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown. “While we adjusted our business plan last year after the shift in equity markets to get us back on a path to profitability without having to cut personnel expenses, the downturn in the ad market in Q2 put significantly more pressure on our business and ultimately it became clear that we would need to take additional measures in order to maintain a confident path to profitability within the next 18 months,” he said.

He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year.

According to a Slack message from Valory, obtained by The Verge, which first reported the layoffs, Valory noted that 37 employees would be impacted.

Additionally, it seems that Plex may have had another round of layoffs earlier this year. Five months ago, a former account executive posted on LinkedIn that they were “affected by company layoffs.”

As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.

Updated 6/29/23 at 12:10 p.m. ET with a statement from CEO.

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Or we could all switch to an Open Source alternative, Jellyfin, and either donate what you’d normally pay Plex or just enjoy it for free. I’ve never used Plex and started with Jellyfin. It’s gotten the job done thus far

It’s the app ecosystem for plex that keeps me there. There’s an app for my LG tv, an app for my in-laws’ Roku etc.

Yes you’re right, Jellyfin isn’t on many platforms but I’m pretty sure they have an app for LG and Roku (Clients here). Although the LG app isn’t the best from what I remember. What I usually do is use an Amazon fire stick with Tailscale for my family and it’s been working well. But also as popularity increases others will be able to contribute more and the apps will become better.

I use the Roku app every day. It's very good.

It's picked up nearly every feature I had used on Plex within the last year. The developers are doing great.

The devs for it are rock stars. So many good improvements in such a short time.

In case you didn't know, Roku and LG TVs have a Jellyfin app.

I do know but I’m grateful for your sharing anyway.

My point was more that plex coverage was wider than jellyfin.

I do agree. Unfortunately some platforms like PlayStation for example won’t allow Open Source apps so there is no chance in there being an app for these platforms.

However, more platforms are slowly being added with the Tizen app for Samsung TVs in progress and usable through side loading.

Agreed. If Jellyfin has any desire to become the market leader and a legit alternative for home media streaming, an already narrow niche, they need to refine this piece of the end user experience.

And I'm not saying Jellyfin wants to do this. They've definitely found their hardcore enthusiast crowd.

Its the only reason I am still using Plex, I don't know if we will ever get Jellyfin on even half the devices that Plex is on. : (

I downloaded the free emby server for my pc and paid the single payment 4€ for the android tv app. No regrets, works great.

Yes you’re right, Jellyfin isn’t on many platforms but I’m pretty sure they have an app for LG and Roku (Clients here). Although the LG app isn’t the best from what I remember. What I usually do is use an Amazon fire stick with Tailscale for my family and it’s been working well. But also as popularity increases others will be able to contribute more and the apps will become better.

If jellyfin could record and playback OTA TV on my Apple TV I’d switch tomorrow, but it seems the team is either unable to or unwilling to work on that feature which is core to how my household uses Plex. The only maybe solution is Infuse which is paid and closed source so is no better really than using Plex in that regard.

Like most things in the world, your use case is not the only use case and as such a solution that checks all the boxes for you will not check all the boxes for everyone.

Does jellyfin supoort Ota recording at all?

It’s a big part of how I use plex as well.

Edit: looks like they may will be looking into it much more but I use hdhomeruns : https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/live-tv/

I wonder how I would replace plexamp

If you are on Android there is Finamp, which isn't quite as nice but it is clean and free. If you're willing to pay a couple bucks there's also Symfonium which IMO is even better than Plexamp. It has way more customization and I love that it uses Material You.

Part of plex’s problem is their lifetime license subscription simply isn’t sustainable, much less geared for growth. Add in some of the cruff they have added into stuff like their “streaming” services and yeah this seems kinda obvious. Especially since they were relying on VC funding drives as recently as 5 years ago.

How does jellyfin compare to Kodi and Emby? I've been using Emby for the last couple of years and it's fine, but I wonder if I'm missing out on any features.

Jellyfin came out of Emby if I am not wrong. Something like they took the open source parts and created jellyfin and then improvised upon that.

Jellyfin is a fork from when Emby went closed source.

Hmm, might give it a shot then. Emby seems more polished than Kodi was, which was the main reason I picked it. Does jellyfin have any of the features Emby premiere offers (GPU transcoding and a Google TV app?).

I've never paid plex but just seals the deal. They obviously can't be trusted to handle the money I give them properly. I wish Jellyfin was a litte more fullybaked though. The app for appletv is really bad

Edit:

Due to some maximally pedantic comments from @SaltySalamander@lemmy.fmhy.ml , I should clear something up. I've never paid plex. I can't trust them to handle the money I give them hypothetically. This doesn't mean that i've both not given them money and given them money. This means that in the case in which I did give them money, I wouldn't trust them to handle it properly, given the rounds of layoffs happening there

I’ve never paid plex

They obviously can’t be trusted to handle the money I give them properly

Which is it?

Can you explain your confusion? I don't know what you're asking

Let's try combining your statements and see if that clears it up.

"They can't be trusted to handle the money I've never paid them."

That still doesn't make any sense. I never said I paid them. What I think happened is you believed to have found some contradiction in what I said and felt so clever about it you had to run to your keyboard lest you forget just how clever you were.

It's possible that in your rush to feel clever, you forgot to understand the english language. Happens a lot with people who have something to prove. Is it possible you read the sentence "They obviously can’t be trusted to handle the money I give them properly." and took it as a tacit statement that I had given them money? To say that someone or some entity cannot properly handle the money I give them does not mean I gave that person or entity money. It means that should I give them money, they wouldn't handle it well, thus I'm not going to. I can understand if english isn't your first language, but this is a very typical construction. One should be able to understand it by the fifth grade. Hope that clears up any confusion. if it doesn't help I highly recommend taking a break from the internet while you brush up on your reading comprehension

You should try out Infuse. It’s $10/year and I’ve been loving it. Better than any other app I’ve tried and at under $1 a month worth it for me.

Maybe I'll give it a try. Happen to know if it supports dual subtitles so I can watch foreign films with my gf who doesn't speak english?

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It seems like in the last few years the company's focus has primarily been on adding things to Plex that I do not want as part of Plex. And not adding the audiobook support that I do want.

Look up audiobookshelf if you're willing to mess with docker a bit and forward a port or two. It's open source and does a, wonderful job.

There was a webtools addon that could add this. I think it's still out there but I forget the name. I know plugins were disabled, but this did still and does still work for me.

I have tried the plugins, they just don't work as well as smart audiobook player.

I have a huge audiobook library, I was fully prepared to do all the processes to move and organize my mess of a library to get it working with Plex. I'm sure you've seen the GitHub guide floating around.

But when it came time to sit down and configure my server for audiobooks, ebooks, tv, movies, and music, I found that audiobookshelf just did a way better job with less of a headache. My current stack is Beet.io with audible support to move my already downloaded library into a better folder and naming structure. Once I get those all finished I won't have to use this step. This gets stuff about ~80% of the way there except when the source is really messed up.

From there I have Readarr looking at the Beets destination folder and managing downloads. This is pretty good for getting most of the rest of the info with some clean up and is similar to setting up other Arrs. Then audiobookshelf for final tweaks and browsing/downloading.

It's quite a pain to ingest an initial large library but for new downloads it's been pretty seamless. Way easier and more consistent than having to do most of this anyway plus fight with Plex. I do still want them to add support, though.

The audiobookshelf app is pretty good for browsing and downloading but I think the player is way worse than Smart Audiobook Player. But what I do is just use the audiobookshelf app to download the books to Smart's library folder and then use the best player app for listening.

Look up audiobookshelf if you're willing to mess with docker a bit and forward a port or two. It's open source and does a wonderful job.

I used Plex for years, and it is the superior product (if you pay) compared to Open Source alternatives. However, after seeing Plex's recent incentive pivots and looking for investors I jumped shipped to Jellyfin. The thermometor of enshittification is indicating that Plex is on its way out.

Folks who haven't looked at alternatives yet, do so now.

Jellyfin, caddy and duckdns can get you all the benefits Plex offers without needing to use their servers for logging in

Literally the only two things keeping me from jumping ship are the multi-user support and Plexamp.

Jellyfin has support for mutliple users

Jellyfin has both of those things, only slightly worse.

I don't think the multi user is worse, I prefer the way Jellyfin does it. Finamp is definitely a downgrade though.

If you are on Android there is Finamp for Jellyfin. It's not quite as nice but it is clean and free. There is also Symfonium which is I think $3 but it is even nicer than Plexamp IMO. The great thing about Jellyfin is there are many options.

And Jellyfin has third party music player apps for android and IOS.

Well shit… it seems the recent rash of enshittification continues. I didn’t realize Plex was doing this so I guess an exit strategy is required. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm a lifetime Plex pass subscriber and I've also used Kodi and Embh.. as far as I can remember at the moment I've never really looked into Jellyfin tho... Does it support OTA DVR with a tuner card like Plex?

That's my must have at this point.

Jellyfin is an Emby fork, so it should support everything Emby does and more; I've never fucked around with OTA with it, but as far as I know it can do it

It is? TIL, that's pretty interesting.

Emby was originally open-source, but went closed-source; Jellyfin forked from the last open-source version

Good to know...

But according to this article from March it looks like it doesn't support PCI or USB tuners unfortunately.

Also sounds like it's quite a ways behind Plex still in terms of UI, bugginess, and ease of use when away from home.

I'll be sticking with Plex for now.

The last time I was having problems with Plex and authentication I installed emby alongside it

Emby was a hell of a lot more responsive, Plex seemed to be more compatible with, well everything.

I use live TV and DVR so I think I might miss that on jellyfin

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Well they also spent the past 10 years building 80% stuff we never wanted

And forcing logins to go through their centralized servers.

Plex login system is such a nightmare. There's a mix of something that is local, some that are online but displayed as local, and some that are completely online. I gave up on Plex when I can't figure out how to remove an old Plex instance that somehow the clients still connecting to instead of the new server.

Doesn't Plex still use Python 2 as well?

I'm honestly surprised that Plex has revenue in the "double-digit millions"

Oh well, worse-case scenario- at least we already have Jellyfin.

I really hope Jellyfin gets a leg up soon, as a Plex Lifetime Pass owner I have become more and more discontent with the platform.

When I paid for my personal licence, it included downloads for all my users, now its cutoff to only older users. I had expected that Plexamp would only be restricted to me while it was being developed, but it remains locked away from my users should never individually have a reason to subscribe for just themselves.

I bought my licence to support the company for the use of my server and I feel like they've only downgraded my service in the last couple years. Getting new users to jump through all of the hoops with their pinned content, only to have them ask me why there are adverts on my movies is frustrating.

I feel like very little has improved in the core product in years, my users default settings are still transcoding to the same bitrate, or 10x its bitrate. Every time I have made a valid suggestion on the old subreddit, the Plex devs had plenty of time to reject any and all criticism.

I don't believe Plex is going to get much better and likely we will see further erosion of our licences as the company only focuses on free users and the FAST service. I will keep checking in on jellyfin and alternatives, hopefully they get a boost soon.

You might give it a try, its a pretty well featured streaming platform. Has a ton of customization for some areas too.

I installed it, but, yet, still use plex instead. Jellyfin does have a native app for my streaming devices too. Plex- just has an interface I prefer at this time.

I'm currently setting up jellyfin as a test run for just my music library to see how the metadata & customisation is managed, currently I'm struggling to merge an artist that has been split and the only suggestions I find is to edit the filenames.

check your metadata and set the correct artist there. for every issue related to that it has always been shitty (extended) metadata. (with people often claiming "no but it's fine" until they take a real look at it and see that it's shit).

so give it a look and clean that up e.g. with mp3tag and/or musicbrainz picard and you will be good to go.

Oooh this is gonna be a big problem for me, thanks for the heads up.

It could still be the learning curve, I don't know for sure if it's not able to merge artists

Jellyfin is way better at subtitles then plex.

I only use plex because jellyfin remote is very difficult, especially when allowing other people on your account

I only use plex because jellyfin remote is very difficult, especially when allowing other people on your account

Jellyfin NEEDS a plexamp tier music streaming app for me to consider moving unless plex completely self-owns harder than Twitter and reddit combined

I'm currently testing Navidrome, which supports many subsonic based apps, my only issue atm is the lack of client side metadata management.

How bad? If I can download music for local playback, change star ratings, and make playlists, that's probably enough for me to bear it

You may need another tool for metadata management separate from either jellyfin/navidrome, if either failed to match I can't seem to manually match or merge artists. Fairly frequently an album will display an artist in a way that isn't interpreted as the same so it just makes a seperate artist for it with little metadata.

Plex does the same thing, the main difference is that I can manually modify how Plex displays its metadata and tell it who the artist is and that's that.

With the others you have to work hard to modify the names and metadata outside.

Agreed. Plexamp gave me random album radio and I can't go back to minutes of silence until I realise I have to choose another album.

I know nothing about PlexAmp, but could FinAmp be what you search for? Does Music only and let's you grab your songs for offline usage.

I’ve never used plex or plexamp but I have used Finamp for listening / offline downloading of my music collection from my Jellyfin server. Is this perhaps what you’re looking for? iOS: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/finamp/id1574922594 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.unicornsonlsd.finamp

The first thing Finamp asks me is to input the URL of my server. I use the server both on the LAN when at home and over the internet when out and about. Will Finamp intelligently use the LAN when I'm on the same network if I use the external URL?

I can confidently say that no it will not "intelligently use the LAN" when you're on the same network - I don't know of any service that will...... unless Plex/Plexamp somehow does this?

The solution is as someone else said - use a DNS Server to forward it in your LAN to the internal IP. If you're unsure how to do this, just search how to setup a Hairpin NAT for the router you own. I can confirm that once you set this up, it will work seamlessly with both Finamp and Jellyfin.

There are definitely services that do this. Something that comes to mind that's related to Plex is nzb360, an Android app to connect all your torrent downloaders, usenet downloaders, sonarr/radarr, etc. It has an option for Local Connection Switching that, if enabled, will switch to using the local IP of your services when in the same LAN and go back to public IP when you're not on the same LAN

Can it do gapless playback?

Gapless? Do you mean downloading media for offline playback? Yes:

Just be prepared for the space requirements of your media library as you may find your phone quickly running out of storage if you have a lot of high res audio:

No, sorry, I mean: can it play sequential tracks with no pause in between them? Like when listening to Dark Side of the Moon, for the classic example.

Jellyfin needs apps I can install on my parent's TV, that's the only thing that keeps me on Plex.

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Unfettered Capitalism breeds emshitification.

Why build and keep a great product when shareholders will always push for more growth and higher revenue. Even if that means laying off your best devs and pissing off users.

Jellyfin is so good now. I used to use Plex but I have no need for it now at all.

Anywhere for people to browse pay-for-access jellyfin servers?

I tried Jellyfin a couple years ago, but it always struggled with ASS (advanced substation alpha) subtitles. I remember it had to burn them on play, or I'd have to use something like SickRage or handbrake or something to pre-burn them, otherwise my relatively modest server would cry. Googling isn't telling me much, anyone know if this has gotten better?

I have no issues. You can either set up automatic transcoding, or enable DirectPlay if your TV (or whatever other client you use) supports the format you're playing.

I only still have a plex server running for audiobook support with the app Prologue. Everything else is happy in Jellyfin and and has been rock solid. Plex went way to corporate and it creeped me out.

Plex DMCA'd my private server a few months ago.

So I cancelled my Plex Pass and moved on to greener pastures.

They seem to be doing everything they can to get rid of their foundational userbase so they can attract... Ad supported free TV watchers?...

What morons are running the show in Silicon Valley?

Wait, what? What were you seeding?

Seriously, I've never heard of Plex giving a shit what you share on a private server. So much so that people sell access to their servers. Makes me wonder if our boy here was up to something more illegal than piracy. 💀

Makes me wonder if our boy here was up to something more illegal than piracy. 💀

I would expect that to get you a knock on the door, not a DMCA notice, as DMCA notices require someone to claim copyright

I hadn't heard of Prologue and it looks amazing, unfortunately it's not on Android.

If I remember correctly, I think I’ve read there is an Android equivalent. Prologue is pretty flawless.

There doesn't appear to be an Android version of this specific app, so it would have to be under a different name.

Copy/paste mostly from another reply I made:

I have a huge audiobook library, I was fully prepared to do all the processes to move and organize my mess of a library to get it working with Plex. I'm sure you've seen the GitHub guide floating around.

But when it came time to sit down and configure my server for audiobooks, ebooks, tv, movies, and music, I found that audiobookshelf just did a way better job with less of a headache. My current stack is Beet.io with audible support to move my already downloaded library into a better folder and naming structure. Once I get those all finished I won't have to use this step. This gets stuff about ~80% of the way there except when the source is really messed up.

From there I have Readarr looking at the Beets destination folder and managing downloads. This is pretty good for getting most of the rest of the info with some clean up and is similar to setting up other Arrs. Then audiobookshelf for final tweaks and browsing/downloading.

It's quite a pain to ingest an initial large library but for new downloads it's been pretty seamless. Way easier and more consistent than having to do most of this anyway plus fight with Plex.

The audiobookshelf library is really great and can pull audiobook specific information from a lot of sources automatically. You can browse by series or narrator or genre too and if you listen through their app or through the browser it syncs your progress which is nice.

The audiobookshelf app is pretty good for browsing and downloading but I don't like the player as much as my usual one. But you can just point the download at whatever folder your favorite player uses.

Since you're already using Plex for audiobooks you can probably skip all these steps straight to audiobookshelf if your folder structure already matches

I’ve tried Audiobookshelf and it just wasnt for me. I hadn’t used Beet with it, but my issue was never really the organization part, more the playback part. I can’t remember exactly what features were lacking in ABS, but I do remember being disappointed in it. To the point where I spun up a dedicated plex server JUST for my audiobooks, and to since then, I’ve been incredibly happy with the UX.

I didn’t know that beets supports books. I used that tool like… honestly at least a decade ago to organize a giant music library I had, and it was a great tool. Thanks for sharing!

Also, I just wish Jellyfin supported audiobooks in the same manner that Plex does. Then I’d be back to one media server running.

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Wow, it’s almost like those free channels the put all over my Plex that nobody wants was was a bad investment. Still love Plex as a service but I find it hard to see any value in FAST.

Try Jellyfin. Much better

I use Apple TV, something about needing a third party proprietary app makes it seem cobbled together compared to Plex, especially with that app being freemium. Maybe someday they will have a dedicated app. Last time I looked (probably a year ago) they didn’t have a system for ratings to make a kids account, has that been added?

Well, on Apple TV you have Swiftfin, (which is 1st party) but as I don't own Apple devices I can't tell you.

I have swiftfin. I've made bug reports etc, they're like "ok yeah maybe next year." Literally two updates in 2 years

It's an open source app made by a non profit group. If you want to get things fixed consider a bounty or donation. Open source developers tend to not have an interest in developing for such a closed ecosystem, especially considering it charges them to distribute their apps.

Yes absolutely agree. But with that said it’s still unusable for the foreseeable future.

Yeah I get that. It's unfortunate how many tv ecosystems there are to support now.

Yep. Some kind of webview or something so you can develop one standard offering and then just webview into it is one potential work around until each and every version can play nice with their respective OS.

Well you can use the web interface on your TV. It doesn't work well, but it is possible.

haha that's janky as hell. At that point you're better off connecting your laptop to your tv over hdmi or something

As of January, the company had 175 employees, and its revenue was in the double-digit millions.

And yet, it is not enough. Perhaps the lesson is to NOT take that VC money if you want your company to survive.

You're probably confounding revenue with profit. I'm not sure about Plex in particular, but it's completely possible to have millions in revenue and actually be in the red

As someone who’s working for their third VC-backed firm, I took the previous comment to mean that the VC money was used to grow the company knowingly in the red, like many growth-stage, VC-funded businesses.

Heck a fair number of post-IPO tech firms continue to operate in the red as a result of their share sales.

Why are all these large tech companies failing this week? Is AI really decimating the internet on all fronts?

The problem isn't AI, but interest rates.

Silicon Valley lived for a long time with an investor market that didn't really have anything better to invest their money in, so they would invest in a series of Internet companies with the hope that one of them would make it rich. Now that lending money can make you more money, it isn't worth it to invest in companies or ideas that don't make money right now.

The VC funding that Silicon Valley relied on dried up. If you are a startup, you need to be profitable before you burn through your cash. If you aren't a startup, you don't have to worry as much about new tech cannibalizing your core businesses, so they are more willing to cut product lines.

It's been going on for nearly a year now, but the layoffs tend to happen in waves because the stock market and investors in general tend to be very reactionary. Also a lot of companies released their quarterly earnings recently

investors / business / money people are stupid hogs who are blindly guessing and making the stingiest possible choices at any turn, they don't know shit or do shit

Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered

lol you posted this 4 times. Lemmy.world was really buggy, I think I did the same a few times before moving instances

Its not a tech issue, its a finance issue.

The tech industry has always been highly speculative. What we saw in the 2010s was only made possible through venture capital and high digital advertising budgets.

Now that there's uncertainty and investments are expensive due to high interest rates, VC and advertisers are pulling back. As a result, we're seeing a bunch of business models that have never been viable on their own have to try and support themselves for the first time.

It's a greed issue. They are expecting 30% growth, and aren't satisfied with that, so they are cutting jobs too.

Growth isn't profit, if I lose $0.10 per widget and I grow my business from selling 1 million widgets per year to 1.1 million widgets per year I'm losing more money than I was before the growth.

Money isn’t as cheap anymore as it used to be. Tech companies have been struggling for about a year now. Even the larger ones have to show profits these days (not defending them, just explaining as I’m working in tech as well)

Not just this week but the past year or so

During covid many companies hired a ton of people due to the growth of many industries, particulalry consumer electronics and platforms like Plex and Netflix, and places like Amazon, Google, etc. Because many people were off work, there was greater demand. Obsiously infinite growth is not possible, and when things slowed down after covid, they moved to dump the employees they no longer needed

It doesnt necessarily have anything to do with AI; AI implementations are still extremely rough and moves to implement them at this point means providing an inferior experience. That said, some companies have been implementing AI, which will likely lead to worsening layoffs down the line

The current prime interest rate means it’s more expensive to borrow money right now, which means PE and VC are not throwing money at tech firms that aren’t traditionally profitable anymore. Plex likely runs at a steep loss and relies on private capital to stay afloat.

It isn't AI, it's the economy. Companies that got money from investors regardless of their profitability now have to survive on their own profits which forces them to restructure

The era of free money is over. You can easily get >4% returns just parking your money in fixed income, so investors want to see cash flow and the easiest way to boost margin is to cut your largest expense (aka headcount). AI is just a convenient excuse.

Corporate Greed

Seriously. They expect 30% growth? They can afford a few salaries.

They don't want to invest in the core program features anymore, they only want more customers & content acquisition.

What they want is inevitably going to make us their competition, Plex's FAST userbase growth will be the death of the original product.

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As a long-time Jellyfin user, I've never really understood how Plex makes money providing a handful of additional features over the FOSS alternative.

Plex is available in a lot more app stores than Jellyfin or Emby is. I run a plex server for friends but I use emby for my personal consumption. The reason I continue to use plex is because it's available on all sorts of smart TV's and semi-obscure streaming devices that Jellyfin isn't.

Why the fuck is Plex even a company? Attention venture capitalists: Get your money grubbing fingers the fuck off decent technologies that should in no way be tied to profit-seeking. We live in a dystopian hellscape.

The problem is that it's public. A private company could very well exist to sell to its users a good service. It being public means it's beholden to the investor's desire for constant growth.

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Wasn't even aware that Plex was still around. Swapped to Jellyfin years ago.

Jellyfin's the way to go IMO, screw Plex and their constant BS.

Yeah, I switched to Jellyfin ages ago and never looked back. Haven't really run into anything I'd want to do that Jellyfin can't do but Plex can.

The evil clone of XBMC is finally in its death throes (yes I’m still bitter about that). No worry, Jellyfin is better.

XBMC

Wow that takes me back lol

007 Nightfire softmod crew checking in. Kodi has been making the best htpc for more than a decade now. I love me some jellyfin, but I'll probably always have a kodi box or two around the house.

I think Kodi would be more akin to XMBC. What's the relation with Plex?

Kodi IS XBMC. It’s the same team, XBMC changed their name to Kodi once it became unavoidably awkward that no one was running XBMC on actual Xboxes anymore. Plex started as a fork of XBMC but went down the proprietary route and shunned their FOSS roots.

Shit. I'd have moved to Jellyfin already if they had an Apple TV client. If they go under I might have to get a 2nd set top box just to run JF.

they have an app on apple tv thats been working well with unraid and a jellyfin docker

Valory noted in his statement that the company was significantly impacted by the slowdown.

He added that the company is still expected to see 30% growth this year.

Which is which?

Growth isn’t always revenue. Or an indication of profitability. If anything their model including a lifetime pass is probably not helping.

More people are cutting the cord daily. And plex is the easiest and most accessible option for less technically inclined.

They have also tried HARD to shake the “piracy” links often associated with them and invested heavily in FAST streaming and other freebies folks here care nothing of but are probably slightly more marketable to non tech people n

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020415/what-more-important-business-profitability-or-growth.asp

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Plex has been going downhill for a bit now. FAST is killing it.

I'm not sure how streaming compares to your own curated content. I mean sure in overall convenience for the average person FAST wins, but that's not the core audience for Plex. If they're competing with FAST then it would mean there was a major shift in it's users and I don't think it has. Nobody who's enjoyed having a NAS full of on demand content (and invested time and hardware) will just chuck it and go "ah yes streaming random stuff with ads was better after all".

If you ask me, Plex should take a hard look at what Emby and Jellyfin are doing right because that's their main competition. I understand they have to make money but locking everything behind their remote server is fundamentally flawed when I can't access a server sitting two feet away from me without a major detour over the internet. They should have integrated with existing solutions like Authelia, reverse proxies and Talescale not piss against the wind.

Yeah this is one of the reasons I don't like companies that profit directly of of pirating. It never ends well and eventually someone is going to figure out they can just buy the company instead of competing on convenience.

One of the main things that made me make the switch to Jellyfin last year was the constant pushing of the ad-supported and other internet based streaming content. I was getting tired of pinning my local media libraries only to have them buried at the bottom of the list again under all the other streaming content after the client apps would update on my family's Rokus. Hardware transcoding is also a nice bonus since I only used Plex's free tier.

My elderly parents are responsible for some FAST views thinking that they were watching something from my library.

I never really watch FAST but aren't most of it softcore porns 😂

FAST

what is that?

In the article. Free Ad Supported sTreaming = FAST.

All the embedded LIVE TV or Movies from Plex are all ad supported streaming media not coming from your own Plex server.

I don't want any of that on my Plex instance and the focus on FAST has been a clear shift in strategy.

My girlfriend asked me why she gets ads on Plex, first i didn't believe her, but then she showed me them, as a lifetime customer, i was furious until i found out that she was watching something outside my library.

This is a feature, but they should tag it much more obvious.

oh that's right. Shit is fucking annoying. I blocked all of that out, which is why I forgot I wanted to switch to Jellyfin in the first place lol.

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Whew I'm glad I just started up my jellyfin server!

I too cancelled my Plex pass about 6mo ago after a colleague introduced me to JellyFin. I imagine the huge hit ISPs have had on tracking torrent downloads is also curtailing their customer base. (Along with many people abandoning pirating and just paying for the convenience of various streaming services).

If Plex were to go down, how easy is it to transfer my setup to jellyfin?

You can try jellyfin alongside plex, just install it and point it to your media. Then you can see if it works for you

Literally just did this on Saturday. It was easy to do and I'm not seeing any significant changes in resource utilization. I am enjoying being able to directly download media onto my phone with Infuse, however.

The jellyfin community is probably best for that question.

You can try jellyfin alongside plex, just install it and point it to your media. Then you can see if it works for you

This doesn’t surprise me. The “features” that keep being added to Plex drive me nuts. I just want to be able to browse and watch from my own library.

Those features are what bring in revenue and I don't blame them for trying to be profitable. You can only get so far on lifetime subscriptions.

As long as they don't abandon the core product so I can continue using it as the awesome media server that it is I have no complaints. They can add all the additional features they want.

DVR, commercial skip, intro and credit detection, plexpy etc... are all awesome features which have been added in the last 5 years or so and enhance the core product.

I hated using Plex. They make you suffer unless you pay way too much for what the service is worth. Jellyfin has been a far more pleasant experience.

Well, it's pretty unsurprising considering all companies are doing the same.

I've given a chance to Jellyfin but it's really frustating how it simply refused to play video files without any descriptive error logs. I think it mostly doesn't work properly on HEVC files (I think Edge is the only browser that properly supports x265) and my Android TV also doesn't play the damn thing.

Also adding that video files from the same release (which assumed are the same encoder), they either work perfectly or just refuse to work :(

I do not pay for Plex but I considered in the past getting a lifetime sub x)

I've had a lifetime licence for a couple years, I'm becoming more and more bitter about the service but jellyfin isn't as appropriate for the people I share with.

Plex isn't improving its core service, in favour of focusing on new FAST customers, but there just isn't an alternative so they get to abuse their position.

After having checked out Plex, Jellyfin and Emby I've decided the latter was still my favorite. Jellyfin just isn't there yet, lack of built in image-scrubbers, intro-outro-detection and quality clients just makes it inconvenient for me. Plex's external authentication makes it a no go for me.

Emby is the only one that's focused on what it tries to achieve and delivers. Also the support team is super helpful and pushes out fixes in a pretty good time. Not FOSS though

HEVC files work fine in JF. I stream to a smart (android) TV, Shield and windows app. You need to have transcoding enabled though for smart tvs and browsers which isn't really an option for docker unless you have the grunt on your host.

Docker does work for transcoding but because I'm using Proxmox it's slightly more complicated since I want my windows VMs to not be a slog and run mediaservers on a iGPU.

Atleast on Plex it can do software transcode and not be bothered by an annoying "cannot play this media on this device". This was a few months ago and I still run both but Plex serves me fine fot the time being

Great, let them burn. I am a plexpass lifetime sub, but switched to Jelly. Opensource for the win.

Plex has been crap for at least 5 years now. Switched to Emby a few years ago and couldn't be happier.

Honestly have no idea why Plex still has such a huge fanbase. It's so commercialized and gross.

Can I just ask, why not JellyFin?

People like myself who, perhaps, set up an Nvidia Shield as a Plex server can't really use it. I don't want my main PC running all the time to serve JF, and the Shield was a cheap and convenient way to serve Plex. If the Shield could serve JF, then that would be different, perhaps.

I suppose I should start planning for an alternative home media server at some point though. Never know...

Let me tell you that it's worth it. You could probably start with a pi with some external storage for a while depending on how big your library is... but getting some metal to run proxmox over is very very nice (and unfortunately very addicting)

“This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make at Plex,” CEO Keith Valory said in a statement

As someone who’s been laid off, it always annoys me when people at the top try to act all hurt. Their name was never brought up as a potential layoff. The decision wasn’t nearly as hard as getting laid off.

Those who made the decision to go after the FAST market and lose money aren’t the ones getting laid off, it’s the ones who followed and built it. The risky outcome was never on the heads of those deciding to take the risk.

‘Some of you may die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take’

That doesn’t make it easy, knowing you have to make a choice that negatively impacts people that have dedicated time and parts of their lives to your project. Having to make a choice that impacts others is not easy and only a sociopath wouldn’t give a shit. Despite what many think on sites like this, often many leaders, especially in smaller companies like this that started as a passion project are not those types of people etc. They often don’t have the same personality traits you HAVE to have to climb a ladder at say, IBM or Dell etc.

That’s not to say it doesn’t suck for the people being laid off. And that you can’t have empathy and sympathy for both sides. It’s not a competition or a binary choice.

Oh boo hoo. They still get to go to work tomorrow. They still get a paycheck. They don't have to go through the hassle of job seeking, interviewing, and the rejection letters. They don't have to go home and wonder if they'll make it through this time. They don't have to see the worry in their spouse's eyes, wondering if they will be able to pay the bills in the future.

And no, two weeks severance isn't enough. It's almost an insult really, as it can take that long to get interviews scheduled.

That’s missing the point entirely. The statement isn’t playing a victim card at all. It’s recogition that it’s a shitty position to put someone in.

Expressing empathy and sympathy for those that the decision affects and stating/iterating that it was not an easy choice isnt something I take as “woe is me” or playing the victim card.

The outcome and road ahead sucks for those affected no matter what. But sometimes all anyone can do is show some mercy and not be a dick with how they approach it.

Now, that said, it’s entirely situational and I don’t actually know the culture at plex as an employer (only as a customer). So this could totally be nothing more than lip service.

But understanding and differentiating the difference between lip service and sincerity does matter.

Empathy doesn't pay the bills. I can't call up the bank and say "hey I can't pay the bill this month, but my ex-boss is really sorry about all this."

Google and Friends gave people 6 months of severance. Thats enough time to get your life back on track. But two weeks is basically just "here have another single payslip to go away forever."

Again not the point and no one said it did. But doing things with respect matters. And nothing lasts forever

Also 2 weeks is pretty standard, and isn’t terrible in an at will situation. Have you ever given a company 6 months notice?

Also if you are working full time at a company like Plex and living hand to mouth that’s not really on plex.

How are layoffs respectful? "Yeah we overspent or aren't quite as profitable as we'd like, so we've determined that you're redundant or unneeded or some other adjective that shouldn't ever be used on a human, and so we're going to have security perp walk you out of the office like you were caught stealing something, and we'll have someone box up your shit and break some of it and mail it to you in 4-8 weeks. Please sign this paper that says you wont talk about what we did to you and we'll toss a few bucks your way."

I've even seen companies where people got informed they were laid off when they couldn't log into their Slack account or whatever else. No other notice. Just dripping with respect.

I didn't get laid off from Plex. I've been laid off from other companies, large and small, and had friends laid off while I was a "survivor". My favorite time I was laid off was a few months after my wife had a baby, and a week after I told my boss she was pregnant again. That one extra paycheck sure helped me pay off the 2 month NICU stay for baby #1! I really felt respected by that company. Really liked it when the CEO sent out a form letter talking about how hard it was on him and how he lost a whole nights sleep figuring out who to screw over, instead of cutting costs in other areas.

There’s so much projection in here it’s too much to reasonably unravel.

You aren’t entitled to a job in perpetuity. From what I can tell no one has been perp walked and that rarely happens with layoffs unless you give them a reason to. Most want to make it as amicable as possible.

Also, its not reasonable to think the CEO of plex taking a 20% paycut would offset 20% of the workforce. Those aren’t even equitable comparisons. In fact he seems to have pretty forward thinking opinions on hiring

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-distributed-workforces-win-keith-valory

I don’t know what he makes and don’t really care to look it up. But the rest is jsut crazy. Plex has taken risks across the board, they may not be working out.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067901/plexs-bold-plan-to-take-on-the-streaming-goliaths

And now that the market has turned funding is drying up, which they have relied on

https://www.fastcompany.com/90625189/plex-funding-streaming-new-features

What’s your solution?

Most want to make it as amicable as possible

Like having an office manager tell you to gtfo, instead of the CEO who was "deeply sorry" for all this, or calling everyone to the floor, reading off a list of names, and then saying "If you heard your name, this is your last day with the company", or the people who find out by not being able to access their work accounts (google, outlook, slack, whatever). Sure is amicable.

I guess I'm just projecting, after all, not all of us are temporarily embarrassed CEOs, who understand just how hard it is to tell someone that they've gotta do a lot of bullshit for the next n weeks, and we're deeply sorry (but not sorry enough not to do it).

Smacks of the same energy Spez gave off when he's "listening to people's concerns" while demodding people right and left and being unwilling to budge on the amazingly arbitrary API cut off.

And I don't need to be a master chef to tell you that refried dumpster chicken is bad food.

Layoffs indicate one thing and one thing only: the leadership made some wrong choices along the way, and so they're going to step on the people that had no input into the process that got them there, so they, the people who made those bad choices, can stick around and continue to make more bad bets. No amount of "mercy" or "empathy" can ameliorate the fact that they're screwing other people over in their own interests.

A key example of this is that in virtually every single layoff severance package, they never move the vesting cliff forwards. Been there less than a year and not at your 25% cliff? Guess what, those n months you spent are worth fuck all. If they were as sorry and merciful as they claim they were, they'd move the cliff up and give you the appropriate percentage of your options. Laid off 2 months before your cliff? Cool, here you go, you get 20.75% of your total (assuming 4 years with 1 year being 25%) vesting package. But no, they just take those shares from you as if they had fired you, because thats all a layoff really is: mass firings

You aren’t entitled to a job in perpetuity

And the people that mass fire people to save their own asses aren't entitled to sympathy. They are the bad guy in this situation.

Since you asked for some things that make laying off people less shitty for the people who actually suffer and not the "poor" CEOs, here's some low cost things you can do that don't fuck people over quite as much. IIRC Shopify did some of these when they had to cut workforce:

  • Give them enough severance to cover the time till they actually find another job. No need to support a freeloader, but no need to be a miser either.
  • Help them start their job search. Your recruiters know other recruiters, they can put the names out and give them some options
  • Actually do the terminations in person, not just an email you send out about how hard it is, or worse, having an underling do it.
  • Do more for insurance and other benefits than the bare minimum COBRA requires
  • Give them the option to keep or purchase (at significantly reduced cost) their work equipment. For many people their work computer becomes their only computer. If you need it back for legal reasons, buy them an equivalent computer, if they want it
  • Give them their stock vesting, regardless of cliff date.
  • Keep their slack and other accounts open, so they have a chance to say goodbye to the "survivors"
  • Don't lay people off before a holiday weekend. That shortens the time they have for job search by at least one day, if not longer.

None of that sounds too egregious, yet its never done by the "deeply sympathetic" leadership.

Those at the top are the sociopaths lol.

So anyone that has grown within a company and into leadership or executive positions are sociopaths full stop?

That’s not really a healthy outlook to have tbh.

Of course it’s not an easy decision. But don’t go all “woe is me” when you’re not the one actually suffering. Own the mistake. Promise to do better.

Expressing empathy and sympathy for those that the decision affects and stating/iterating that it was not an easy choice isnt something I take as “woe is me” or playing the victim card.

The outcome and road ahead sucks for those affected no matter what. But sometimes all anyone can do is show some mercy and not be a dick with how they approach it.

Now, that said, it’s entirely situational and I don’t actually know the culture at plex as an employer (only as a customer). So this could totally be nothing more than lip service.

But understanding and differentiating the difference between lip service and sincerity does matter.

Empathy and sympathy is talking about how awful it is for people to have to lose their job. Especially in this market. What they’re doing is talking about themselves and how difficult it was for THEM to make the decision. I don’t care about them. I care about those who lost their livelihood.

You’re right that it wouldn’t be an easy decision. It must be awful. But losing your job is still way worse.

When COVID started really popping off, management at my old job gathered all the technicians together in the shop. They read a bunch of names off a piece of paper while everyone stood around confused, then they said "If you heard your name, this is your last day with the company." Absolutely heartless.

They then put out a canned public message about how hard the decision was, and how every employee is a member of the family.

Just curious, for everyone saying they switched to jellyfin, were you using the free version of plex?

I had a Plex subscription and switched to Jellyfin. Same reasons as everyone else- it was all about Plex's content and recommendations running on my equipment when the whole point for me was to have something with only my own content.

Well I use both (server and user) and plex is imo more stable with Google Cast wich is 90% of my use case. Mobile viewing is way more superior with jellyfin tho, but nothing beats plexamp

Plex is more stable in most regards, we all would have happily moved over to jellyfin if it was nearly as comparable.

It really isn't, in my experience.

Plex was always unusable when my Internet was down (offline mode refused to work, no matter what I did) and their insistence on forcing the metadata search through their own cache meant it was often outdated or simply broken.

Yes. There was a bit of a learning curve, but my Jellyfin now works better than Plex ever did (and I finally have GPU acceleration working).

Hopefully they leave the free features as is, and don't starting going down the road many other companies have to squeeze out profit.

Agreed, but I have a feeling I'll be using Jellyfin in a few years.

Join us; It's fantastic.

Please put some love on the appletv app for the love of god. I had sworn off plex totally based on the jellyfin community evangelists. VERY quickly switched back when I couldn't even select which subtitle I wanted

I tried jellyfin for a short while but was so freaking annoyed by jellyfin users. Yes, I know you love your app but there are some large issues with it too, and I was shouted down repeatedly like I havent seen since Android v apple.

I experienced some of that gatekeeping too. "Oh I'm sorry, did you want a corporate streamer that let's you change your subtitles get lost corpo"

Exactly. It's not even for me but like, I have older family members who use it. I need it to be as easy for them to use as Plex is. Yes I know I can open the terminal and do x y and z, but they are going to just know "if I hit play it should play".

I'll give it another shot with this news, but yeah, was put off by them.

I mean yeah I would very happily move to Jellyfin. It just needs some time to cook. As of now it's got quite a bit of work to do.

You can't always wait for something to be great to join. Most FOSS products would die w/ that mentality. The larger the userbase, the more motivation to develop. Join, comment, engage, & help to build the best product. Or don't, up to you, but the community would love if you did.

I get that, but with a product I use in a near production environment I just can't swap over. I have users who use my server right now, it would be a process to swap them over to something that has feature parity. I keep jellyfin in a side environment right now, but until things are more baked in I can't swap over.

Try emby, much better than jellyfin for me. I had an issue that jellyfin wasn't able to reproduce some of the series that I was watching, or it had severe issues. I had zero issues with emby.

I'll give it a shot. I had written it off before for reasons I don't remember off the top of my head.

edit: oh that's right, it's paid. I'll stick with the free stuff

Sure thing. I had some issues with jellyfin transpiling some series, the Android TV app was unable to skip forward for example, and sometimes it stopped reproducing (WiFi issues, sure but they didn't happen with emby). I only had to pay like 5€ total for the android app, and the server is completely free. I would switch to jellyfin if their streaming app / service were as good, but beiing the only one in the household that cares, having already paid the single payment to emby and being the one that has to fix issues on movie night while my partner is side eyeing me for changing shit again, I won't bother for a good while (^_^')

FOSS are not monolithic entities. Some individual with the knowledge, skills and free time has to be willing to work on those things. Most people who develop certain features in open source, do so because of a personal interest. If you don't have the skills yourself, you can go find whoever maintains that app or someone willing to contribute and drop them a donation for their continued effort.

Monolithic tech giants accostumed people to pay for services with their private data and attention. As the past year has proven, this wasn't a healthy arrangement and the comeuppance was way overdue. Contribute to the solution, don't just complain about the problem.

Good points, and I try as hard as I can not to be that guy who complains about free community driven software. I see that and I absolutely hate it. That said, if I have a FOSS offering vs a Corpo offering, and the FOSS project has no resources or desire to put resources towards something the corpo offering already has, I will go with the corpos, ethics be damned.

If they're trying to appease shareholders, then I feel like the enshittification is just starting. I've got Emby Premiere (webhooks were paywalled and are quite useful) and like that I have an off-ramp to Jellyfin if they start heading down a similar path.

Been thinking about migrating off Plex for a bit with performance hits, apps shoving their channels my way and their seeming decline from personal media. After propping up Audiobookshelf for audiobooks, now I’m considering Funkwhale for music and Jellyfin for video but I’ll have to test a bit more.

Jellyfin works ok for music with finamp, but it might not meet your requirements.

Hmm! I’ll have to goof around with this. Thanks!

Hopefully that doesn’t mean we are going to see a slowdown in personal media features.

It will. As someone who only uses Plex, I’m sure the company will have to strive so hard after monetization that they’ll ruin the product and force us onto an open source alternative. I like Plex, but I don’t expect it to last after seeing all the other tech companies fail at this.

we already have seen a slowdown in core usability features in favour of chasing new customers.

I don't have anything bad to say of Plex as a company, and I wish them luck on their endeavor, but if they ever fall, I just hope they open source their software...

This a 1/1000 likely outcome. Bankrupted companies will typically sell assets including IP and software to other companies to pay creditors (which excludes open sourcing them). And well before bankruptcy, any financial issues will cause Plex to be modified to support shitty monetization to the point that you won't want the source code amyway.

Sorry for the bad outlook, better that you be ready than to hope for a unicorn.

No, they couldn't do that. They'd have to sell every asset to pay the employees or give their ceo a golden parachute or any number of things aside from actually open sourcing. Anyway, Jellyfin is open source and just needs to work to reach feature parity.

If they saw the writing on the wall they could open-source before they went into bankruptcy. However, that could open them up to lawsuits if it was deemed they were "destroying" their assets before they could be claimed by investors and/or creditors, but that's a big legal gray area depending on what you can show in court. And venture capitalists have better lawyers than bankrupt companies typically do.

Why are they even a company in the first place? They make an app that should objectively not be tied to profit-seeking.

Dear venture capitalist shitbags: get your money grubbing fingers off of technologies (like Reddit) that are objectively worse when tied to profit-seeking motives.

Making a tool for people to use is fine to seek profits. The trouble with Plex is that they’re going the Reddit route of trying so hard to generate profit that they neglect their core users and the experience that they’re willing to pay for.

I disagree. I think profit seeking makes sense for certain tools. However, I don’t think it makes sense here.

Now, if someone were to create a subscription based version of activitypub which would attempt to decentralize the Netflix business model, I could see tying profit motives into the whole system. The system would ideally dole out proceeds proportional to the viewership of each title. Now THAT would make sense. Charging people for your video streaming software doesn’t, IMO.

How is it making double digit millions? Through deals with companies and plex passes?