Plex's Winamp-inspired music player Plexamp is now free | TechCrunch

Welp_im_damned@lemdro.id to Android@lemdro.id – 214 points –
Plex's Winamp-inspired music player Plexamp is now free | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com

Well this is cool. Now time for me to a media server again.

71

The app is great! I'm glad it's finally available to everyone.

But Plex's music support is clearly an afterthought. Anemic ID3 support, impossible to edit tags, even worse playlist editing support, etc. It's quite sad

I'm confused by this comment. Are you recommending it or nah?

The app is great! But if you're used to micromanage you songs, you gonna have a bad time.

I always put my music through MusicBrainz Picard, have had 0 issues with plex picking stuff up

It's not a matter of Plex not picking it up correctly. More a matter of what you're limited to do afterwards with the data.

And once you're there, you're stuck in the closed ecosystem.

But hey I'm still using Plexamp so they must be doing some things right

Ahh that's fair, yeah it would be awesome if it allowed editing metadata

I honestly still use iTunes as a manger for my music, and doubletwist on android to sync solely because it moves over the smart playlists as well. I have WAY more music than necessary and I'm very meticulous about what music goes where.

If the iTunes playlists could sync natively to plex it really wouldn't be that much of an issue and I'd stream from my server :/.

Same. iTunes and winamp are still the best, imo. I use Plex to stream my library but all my management is done in the other two apps

Btw, there is an itunes extension for Plex that will display your playlists. I think it's built in but you need to enable it

Last I checked it doesn't work with smart playlists :(. I'll check into it again, it may have been updated.

Oh my bad. Yeah I don't think smart playlists work, at least not for me :/

I feel you. I got tired of iTunes and migrated everything thing to Plex for the sake of usability / device compatibility, and I am dumbfounded by the lack of basic features in Plex music.

They basically applied the features of Plex Movies over to Plex Music without really thinking about it much.

Yep that's exactly what I thought too. I do like how simple the movie/tv management CAN be (assuming naming structures are correct) but a lot is lost in the weeds of simplicity.

Well, TV management is easy unless it's anime (looking at you DBZ). Or looney toons. Ended up having to buy a license to file bot for dbz.

Yeah I'd say that's more of a Plex core complaint rather than Plexamp. Plexamp has been great but plex has a long way to go in terms of music support. iTunes library management was much better than what plex has.

I agree, the app is great and as you said it would be nice to be able to edit or remove albums/songs that don't display properly.

Also, where's my damn audiobook support!

I use Jellyfin - music, shows, movies... it's open-source and has a lot of features Plex doesn't including, not having to create an account. It's your's to do what you want.

That's not really a great feature, but, is the user experience easy to use for sharing? Meaning when I have my tech inept family members watch at their home from my server, can they use it as easy as Plex?

The sign-in experience is where you're going to get a lot of friction. Your users are going to need your server address. They'll have to log in to devices with username/password including TVs unless they have signed in once already somewhere else on the network like a desktop. Then you can set up an Easy PIN code or use Quick Connect, but those are hidden behind the user settings menu.

Be sure to update the factory files to point it to a better external player. The built in one for Jellyfin sounds terrible.

The amount of work is on the server side, but they are forks of the same code. The sharing side is not as complex. Plex has hit an impass on remaining solvent as a business. Emby is even in a better situation than Plex is and quite frankly, I don't see a reason to use them when Jellyfin is an option.

Actually there is a Jellyamp which works with Jellyfin although not as feature complete as Plexamp

If you're talking about this, then it hasn't seen an update since 2021. Maybe you mean Finamp? It's a serviceable app, but it's very simple and dated-looking compared to Plexamp. Definitely better than the Jellyfin app though which is just a web wrapper.

We're in the process of redesigning Finamp from the ground up, adding new features and keeping existing ones. More info here. Stay tuned!

There is Swiftfin for iOS. It’s not just a music app though. But it’s better than the official app.

Plexamp is one of the main reasons I continue to use Plex. Does Jellyfin have anything close to how awesome plexamp is?

Nope I still use plex for music. Jellyfin for everything else.

Don't get why people gets so exited for this when there's better software without paywall and open-source like Navidrome or Funkwhale.

If you going to self-host, use a dedicated software

Eh, I like Plexamp’s features, but the app is not exactly free, more “freemium.” All the compelling features that you’d want to use it for are behind the subscription paywall. DJ, track and album radio, the unique features aren’t free.

Also, at least on iOS the app feels clunky and sluggish with long delays when skipping, scrubbing, playing, and pausing. (EDIT - turns out this is specifically an issue when using Airplay, it's fine for local playback).

My wife uses Plexamp on desktop (Mac and PC) and it seems good there. I personally tend to use the WiiM app for Wiim mini with Asset UPnP server.

I use oto for local playback and Symfonium for streaming (even though it's clunky as fuck when it comes to organizing albums by data and discovery)

It really whips the llama's ass.

Aside from having visualizers, how is this at all like Winamp?

Yeah, this doesn’t quite whip the llama’s ass. The only obvious resemblance / possible inspiration I see is the name? …which is kind of.. eh..

"Has visualizations"
So did Windows Media Player, plus Plexamp's just can't compare to Milkdrop

Aah, MilkDrop, nothing comes even close. I still stay on the 32-bit version of foobar2000 to be able to run MilkDrop with it since the plug-in that makes it possible hasn’t been updated.

And yeah, what an empty statement again, sure seems like drawing the comparison was 100% for clickbait’s sake.

Have you tried Butterchurn Visualizer? You need to allow it access to your microphone and play sound through your speakers, but it is one of the better desktop visualizers along with ProjectM on Android.

I have tried (and bought the android version of) ProjectM but I still prefer the MilkDrop presets although IIRC they should be compatible, I just never got around to moving them over. Butterchurn though, first time hearing about it; gonna give it a spin, thanks for the recommendation!

I heard about this yesterday and I downloaded the plexamp app on my windows desktop to try it. When I ran it, the first thing it had me do was sign into it with my plex account. It then tossed an error at me telling me that I need to subscribe to plex pass to use it. I don’t understand the “free” part about this plexamp going free announcement.

Maybe there needs to be a server side update on plex's part or something.

I had the same assumption. Or maybe nobody uses the windows version, lol. I did a Google search and checked the plex forums, nobody was talking about the issue. I just sort of walked away after that.

Still, very odd to make an announcement that’s literally not true. Gotta be something weird on my end I guess?

Same thing happened to me as well. So I assumed it was some server side update that hasn't gotten pushed out yet

Yes, the same way I can watch movies for free on Netflix, after I sign in with my account.

Wow, just in time as the new owners of Winamp release their app.

Wait winamp is releasing their own app?

It's not the same team that made it back in the day but the team who has the copyright is working on one.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/winamp-is-back-on-android-with-a-whole-new-take-on-this-classic-music-app/ar-AA1dzE4C

Honestly, I'm not holding high hopes for this thing at all. Feels like it's just some rando company puppeteering Winamp's corpse around for the brand recognition and nothing else.

Yeah, that's about my feeling too. It's why I keep specifying its the team that has winamp now. Not like the forks are any better. Wacup is a bloated mess.

Blast from the past... I forgot when I stopped using it but used to be my go to for all that yarrr mp3s

But yes apparently its happening.