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.
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.
Audiobookshelf is great
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.
Thanks! I’ll check out audiobookshelf.
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.
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.
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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.
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. : (
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.
I downloaded the free emby server for my pc and paid the single payment 4€ for the android tv app. No regrets, works great.
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.
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 don’t understand what you mean by “they may be looking into it much more”? HDHomerun is supported explicitly per the link you provided
I* may be. Autocorrect got me
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?).
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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.
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?
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.
Literally the only two things keeping me from jumping ship are the multi-user support and Plexamp.
Jellyfin has support for mutliple users
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.
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.
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.
Jellyfin, caddy and duckdns can get you all the benefits Plex offers without needing to use their servers for logging in
I’m a lifetime Plex pass subscriber and I’ve also used Kodi and Emby… 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
Jellyfin does support live tv and recording
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Jellyfin is so good now. I used to use Plex but I have no need for it now at all.
Know a good way to export/import? I’ve got a large database with custom artworks etc.
Jellyfin has tools that let you export a watch list from one app and merge it with jellyfin
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.
Anywhere for people to browse pay-for-access jellyfin servers?
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.
Is this company even publicly traded? I don’t think so.
Doesn’t need to be publicly traded to have those issues.
Yeah, case in point: Reddit.
But they want to, that’s why they’re started
Jellyfin NEEDS a plexamp tier music streaming app for me to consider moving unless plex completely self-owns harder than Twitter and reddit combined
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’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.
Other than song/album ratings, I don’t do metadata mangement in Plexamp.
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?
Just use your DNS-server and forward it in your LAN to the internal IP
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why didn’t i think of that
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.
I guess it doesn’t really matter if it does since I’m only in it for the music…
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
Local DNS to point at your reverse proxy works just fine.
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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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.
Why are all these large tech companies failing this week? Is AI really decimating the internet on all fronts?
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
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered
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.
I don’t know if I’d call Plex a “large tech company” though
I would as they store massive amounts of data
What do you mean?
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.
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.
They’ve been failing for a while. It’s capitalism failing, not some magic tech entity concept like AI.
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 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
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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.
It’s a paid app, but infuse works very well on apple TV
Good tip. Thanks.
They have “Swiftfin” but it’s had two updates in two years and it’s close to useless
I’ve been using Swiftfin on my Apple TV with zero problems. Its a lot more simple than Plex.
Good tip.
they have an app on apple tv thats been working well with unraid and a jellyfin docker
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.
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.
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.
Does XBMP ring any bells?
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.
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 use jellyfin when you already have Plex set up?
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.
Tell me, what is Plex’s Nasdaq ticker?
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.
Plex is private though?
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30% growth after a 20% layoff huh?
Makes the growth 30% easier when it’s 20% less!
