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.
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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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.
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
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
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.
Jellyfin NEEDS a plexamp tier music streaming app for me to consider moving unless plex completely self-owns harder than Twitter and reddit combined
Jellyfin needs apps I can install on my parent’s TV, that’s the only thing that keeps me on Plex.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Jellyfin is so good now. I used to use Plex but I have no need for it now at all.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Hopefully they leave the free features as is, and don’t starting going down the road many other companies have to squeeze out profit.
Hahaheheheh, aaahhhhh…
wipes eyes
Anyway, thanks for the morning chuckle.
Whew I’m glad I just started up my jellyfin server!
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Jellyfin would be fine for “just me”. Unfortunately I need the media server to be super simple, so that the rest of my house can navigate without issues. Unfortunately IME Jellyfin is not there… yet.
I love it’s growth and I keep a close eye, but I’m still mainly using Plex for now. I run Emby and JF alongside it as well. As it currently stands, I think from an end user perspective it’s Plex > Emby > Jellyfin, but I’m looking forward to the day I can fully move to JF.
That said, I think they’re all getting really close.
Where do the users in ur house struggle? My family loves it. I was able to remedy all of their complaints with shitty band-aid fixes, but they work and they like and use it.
The biggest thing was syncing watch states across multiple servers. We have access to a number of Plex servers and it’s super simple to have the state of each episode synced & saved so you don’t need to think about it.
I tried a few plugins for Jellyfin but could never quite get there.
Outside of that we’ve had some other smaller issues. Not to be rude but the Android TV app is… bad. We have a lot of issues trying to fast forward / rewind in the app. Many times fast forwarding completely freezes playback, but if I fast forward to a point, hit back to go back to the episode page, then hit “resume from <time>” it works great. So jumping from minute 1 to minute 10 doesn’t work, but going from min 1 to min 10, closing the episode, then hitting “Resume from minute 10” works great.
It’s a lot of small frustrating things like that. However, Jellyfin definitely has its upsides. It plays high bitrate / high res files more smoothly than Plex for sure, both from a local and remote network. I’m not against it, it just feels more like “something for a tech guy” and less like “something for the whole family” right now to me. I look forward to the day I can switch without concern though. </time>
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.
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 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
