Plex lays off 20% of its staff

[lorodoes]

 

 

Summary

 Plex lays off 20% of their staff or 37 people. The lays affected every department.

 

Quotes

Quote

 Plex has decided to try and get its budget back to being cash-flow positive in the next 18 months, but “the only way to reach profitability under these constraints is to significantly reduce our personnel expenses,” Valory said.

 

My thoughts

 Here are a few things that I think would have helped plex in the long run, 1) the lifetime plans are good for users, but bad for continued development, 2) they really need to start listening to their users rather than adding/removing features, 3) they really need to have a support plan that people can subscribe to that can actually help troubleshoot issues rather than just rely on community forums and reddit, 4) lastly ad revenue isn’t the end all be all, they have ad supported shows and movies and as Luke says, ads really can’t sustain that model.

 

Sources

 https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777418/plex-layoffs-20-percent-staff

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, lorodoes said:

 

 

Summary

 Plex lays off 20% of their staff or 37 people. The lays affected every department.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

 Here are a few things that I think would have helped plex in the long run, 1) the lifetime plans are good for users, but bad for continued development, 2) they really need to start listening to their users rather than adding/removing features, 3) they really need to have a support plan that people can subscribe to that can actually help troubleshoot issues rather than just rely on community forums and reddit, 4) lastly ad revenue isn’t the end all be all, they have ad supported shows and movies and as Luke says, ads really can’t sustain that model.

 

Sources

 https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777418/plex-layoffs-20-percent-staff

I mean to providing tech support they would need to significantly increase their staff size and I imagine it wouldn't be something they could easily do. It would probably be a bit complicated to build out a support staff and other things required to provide tech support to all plex users who pay for tech support. 

[lorodoes]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I mean to providing tech support they would need to significantly increase their staff size and I imagine it wouldn't be something they could easily do. It would probably be a bit complicated to build out a support staff and other things required to provide tech support to all plex users who pay for tech support. 

Very true that it would be a significant increase in staff size, but if there was a monthly charge for support or pay per incident model they could have easily gotten the money they need to offset the cost and then some. On top of that even if the response time was SUPER long, I think people would be happy with any kind of interaction from the company rather than a post and pray model they have now. 

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, lorodoes said:

Very true that it would be a significant increase in staff size, but if there was a monthly charge for support or pay per incident model they could have easily gotten the money they need to offset the cost and then some. On top of that even if the response time was SUPER long, I think people would be happy with any kind of interaction from the company rather than a post and pray model they have now. 

I just think that it would be complicated and it isn't something that could be easily implemented. Sure they could make money off of it but that would require going through the numbers and seeing how much they needed to charge and how many support staff they needed along with how much it would cost to train the support staff in actually knowing enough about plex to help customers. I could understand if the program was used by businesses and companies then you could easily get alot of money with a paid support program but for a primarily consumer program I find it hard to believe that it would be super easy to make a support option and have it profitable right away. 

[AlTech]

Lifetime plans are unsustainable and need to stop being sold or just made illegal if companies are unwilling to run sustainable businesses.

 

Also, if they want to offer paid support and/or increase their monthly or annual prices to offer better support then they should do that.

Problem is B2C market is too sensitive to prices these days so perhaps they should be looking to expand into B2B sales somehow.

 

Edit: I just checked their pricing and holy cow are they underpricing their product.

 

They should double the price of their Premium version and make the currently free stuff the current Premium version pricing. Removing the lifetime option of course.

[lewdicrous]

31 minutes ago, AlTech said:

Lifetime plans are unsustainable

Especially when it's discounted multiple times a year.

[Real_PhillBert]

I paid $75 for my lifetime plex pass years ago. I understand trying to get people in, but that price needs to be increased by a lot. Even at the current $120 without any sales, that's a crazy low price.

[Reihnold]

1 hour ago, AlTech said:

Lifetime plans are unsustainable and need to stop being sold or just made illegal if companies are unwilling to run sustainable businesses.

The other side of the coin is that they bring more cash immediately. So if you are cash strapped and need it now, it might be a solution. However, I concur that it's not sustainable long term.

 

I have a lifetime membership but I don't use it anymore, because the whole software has chosen a wrong path long ago and is not working anymore without an internet connection. As I value my privacy, I have switched to NAS with Kodi first and now I am using Jellyfin.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Real_PhillBert said:

I paid $75 for my lifetime plex pass years ago. I understand trying to get people in, but that price needs to be increased by a lot. Even at the current $120 without any sales, that's a crazy low price.

Honestly I would think it would make sense if you bought the software outright for a fixed price but then you only get that version and not updates which would be reasonable. Then you can always buy the newer version if you really want some of the updates made. 

[Maticks]

There is room in the UI for a thin Ad while not playing video, if that helps generate revenue for non-plex pass customers. That would at least translate more into plex pass and generate revenue from people who are happy with the free App.

 

Being a Plex user from the beta at the start, there was a heap of growth and what set Plex apart from XBMC it did the media playback better and metadata indexing.

Plex has added feature after feature on but instead of tackling how we can do video streaming better and related to the core reason people are using Plex they have lost their way.

In trying to do Music Streaming running a split app for that on several platforms. then going into camera roll and arcade games.

Bugs that are still unresolved in Sync got rolled into Downloads which across the board is inconsistent in experience some platforms it falls randomly for no reason.

Watching video is a key reason people are using Plex but because of all the side projects these problems are left unresolved.

 

I hope with this removal of staff is also a rethink of getting Plex back to its core values of what the program is and focus hard on making it the best platform to watch video on anywhere on anything.

 

I am still personally running Server version 1.25.9.5721 because Samsung TV's don't work externally connecting to the server after updating past this version.

 

[SeriousDad69]

Reading plex news and comments always gives me a good laugh, both here and on reddit. People asking plex to charge them more money, and even wanting them to inject ads . Like they didn't actually want to get off the streaming/cable plantation, they just wanted a new master cracking the whip.

[Avocado Diaboli]

28 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

Reading plex news and comments always gives me a good laugh, both here and on reddit. People asking plex to charge them more money, and even wanting them to inject ads . Like they didn't actually want to get off the streaming/cable plantation, they just wanted a new master cracking the whip.

Nobody has been asking for ads in the paid tiers. It's just that the free tier could reasonably be ad supported. As much as I personally don't like ads and try to block them anywhere possible, it's still a viable business strategy for some, so it's not an unreasonable suggestion.

 

As for the payment aspect, I too have a lifetime pass. In the age of continuous development, that is antithetical to generating profit. In the days of fixed versions, where you paid for updates and upgrades every time one got released, a one-time payment per version made sense.

 

It's the mixing and matching of payment options, either a lifetime pass for $120 or an annual subscription at $40, that seems backwards. Let's be charitable and say that you could argue a new version every 3 years is warranted, given the many platforms the servers and clients support. After 3 years, the subscription still generates revenue for Plex. The lifetime pass holder gets everything for free after those 3 years.

 

I bought my lifetime pass in November 2020, so by the end of the year, I've gotten the same service as any regular subscriber. But after that, I continue to get the same service without paying any more than that subscriber. This is what's typically referred to as a short-sighted business decision, making more money right now instead of making sure that revenue keeps coming in indefinitely. And even though I get all that future stuff for free, I still have a vested interest in the survival of the company, because if they go under, I won't get any new updates, new platforms won't get supported, etc. I may have gotten my money's worth by the end of the year, but I'd like to continue to use the software indefinitely. And that only works if someone maintains it.

[SeriousDad69]

20 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

-snip-

Realistically, Plex probably doesn't want to rock the boat. They know the second they start trying to charge more, renege on lifetime passes, or inject ads, they're going to start losing people to jellyfin (and maybe emby). It's a snowball effect. The more people on jellyfin, the more developers. The more developers, the better the apps and features become. Jellyfin is already at the point I'd never even consider going back to plex, so yeah this isn't the time for them to rock the boat.

[Avocado Diaboli]

On 6/30/2023 at 9:52 AM, SeriousDad69 said:

Realistically, Plex probably doesn't want to rock the boat. They know the second they start trying to charge more, renege on lifetime passes, or inject ads, they're going to start losing people to jellyfin (and maybe emby). It's a snowball effect. The more people on jellyfin, the more developers. The more developers, the better the apps and features become. Jellyfin is already at the point I'd never even consider going back to plex, so yeah this isn't the time for them to rock the boat.

I doubt the crowd willing to pay for Plex while Jellyfin and Emby exist (which both did for years at this point), who still voluntairily use Plex as of right now, would jump ship just because of a price increase is that big, because a free option has been available all this time already. I gladly paid for Plex because when I checked out all the options, none of them offered something akin to Plexamp, that is, a way for me to stream my own music to my device in a way that's able to cache a playlist without having to download files beforehand so the music doesn't cut out once you drive into a tunnel and lose the internet connection and that's able to remember the spot of the song I left off when I close the app. It's the little touches like that, small quality of life details that FOSS almost never manages to implement. That, or a GUI that isn't an absolute eyesore.

 

Also, the idea that an increased userbase automatically attracts a larger pool of developers willing to participate in development is completely unsubstantiated. 

[SeriousDad69]

14 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

-snip-

Jellyfin was really bad until ~2021, it wasn't a good plex replacement in the slightest. As for whatever features you need, the jellyfin developers are really down to Earth. I've gotten them to implement multiple features I've wanted. There's like three or four music apps at this point, one of them might have the feature you want, or might be willing to implement it because it sounds like a no-brainer. Gelli seems promising if you're on Android, it has gapless playback and caching on its feature list.

But yeah if everything you have already works and it's not costing you more money, there's no reason for anyone to even think about switching. I switched to jellyfin because it was the first to implement AV1 support, and so far I have no reason to switch back to plex. I'd double have no reason to switch if they tried charging me more or injecting ads.

As for "more users = more developers", it seems pretty reasonable to assume a project with 1,000 users will have less potential developers than one with 1,000,000 users. Especially when it's not something that goes under the hood like a js library or whatever lol

[suicidalfranco]

Why don't they just do lifetime pass to be like perpetual software licenses?

Include X years of updates, which past that you either upgrade by buying a new perpetual license, or stay with what you got but receive no new features.

It doesn't stop working and you can keep using it as is.

[LAwLz]

I don't really get why people use Plex.

Why not use Jellyfin which doesn't lock basic features like hardware-accelerated encoding behind paywalls? Or something like Kodi if you don't want transcoding at all (like me).

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I don't really get why people use Plex.

Why not use Jellyfin which doesn't lock basic features like hardware-accelerated encoding behind paywalls? Or something like Kodi if you don't want transcoding at all (like me).

Plex has more supported clients over more types of devices. My primary device for using Plex is a PS4, Jellyfin does not have a client for that and no alternative method works either.

 

Plex for a really long time has had great device support, good user interface, good account management and effortless external access setup. Library management and underlying filesystem is also good, automatic population of show information like synopsis, ratings and trailer links.

 

Others might be close to or are much closer now but Plex has been around for a long time actually offering a little more and a little better and people with life time licenses have no good reason to switch. New users still have to consider the finer details since neither Plex nor Jellyfin do each thing exactly the same or as good as each other, free is simply a bit more compelling options wise.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I don't really get why people use Plex.

Why not use Jellyfin which doesn't lock basic features like hardware-accelerated encoding behind paywalls? Or something like Kodi if you don't want transcoding at all (like me).

For me because Plex has the nicest UI out of the three (out of the box at least) and has worked the smoothest for me in both setup and operations. I tried Kodi for a bit when Plex had a transcoder bug so it wouldn't Direct Play anything for me and it wasn't quite it. Setup was fine from what I remember, but the user experience wasn't quite as polished as Plex's. I tried Jellyfin a long time ago as well, but at the time I tried it I had a hard time even just getting it set up at all. It has probably improved over that time, but maybe I should give it another shot.

[SeriousDad69]

50 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Plex has more supported clients over more types of devices. My primary device for using Plex is a PS4, Jellyfin does not have a client for that and no alternative method works either.

Yeah Sony consoles (and Nintendo) is more than likely never happening for Jellyfin. The developers don't want to join Sony's circus of insanely restrictive NDAs and being forced to closed source everything related to any potential PS4/5 client. They tell you to just use the web browser, which honestly sounds pretty bad lol (but I haven't used a console web browser since Xbox 360, so maybe they're usable now?)

Anyone could make a PS4/5 client if they wanted to, the official developers just have no interest.

Other than that some clients are better than others. The Roku client is great given the limitations Roku places on everyone. JMP for Windows/Mac/Linux is great, although it could use some polish and really needs to be in the Microsoft store for auto updating. The iOS app is great, and they're working on a much better one. I cant really speak on Android or WebOS because I've never used them personally, but Android has multiple third party apps available. There's even a books/comics app for Android and iOS that is in development. Once it's complete I'm fully expect it to be the best way to read comics on my phone.

I'd say check back in 6-12 months on the client situation. But if anyone is a Roku and iOS user like myself, everything is more than good enough to go right now. The most important thing is having some level of hardware acceleration available for transcoding, like a GTX 1050ti or Intel HD Graphics 630 or better. It really smooths out the experience if you have multiple devices because some are really weird with what they do and don't support.

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't really get why people use Plex.

Why not use Jellyfin which doesn't lock basic features like hardware-accelerated encoding behind paywalls? Or something like Kodi if you don't want transcoding at all (like me).

One I didn’t know JellyFin was a thing. Two the feature I needed was the DVR for OTA TV, I know Plex alternatives have that, but they don’t always include the easy setup or guide data. 

[Fasterthannothing]

On 6/29/2023 at 12:01 PM, Real_PhillBert said:

I paid $75 for my lifetime plex pass years ago. I understand trying to get people in, but that price needs to be increased by a lot. Even at the current $120 without any sales, that's a crazy low price.

Exactly honestly it should be like $300 Also if plex stopped trying to add stupid features they could slim down the development substantially. At this point it should be 90% stability and 10% innovation if they are slim on cash they need to focus on the product itself branching out obviously isn't helping. But at least they haven't pulled people's life time subscription so I'll commend them for that.

[Donut417]

20 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

if plex stopped trying to add stupid features they could slim down the development substantially. At this point it should be 90% stability and 10% innovation if they are slim on cash they need to focus on the product itself branching out obviously isn't helping. But at least they haven't pulled people's life time subscription so I'll commend them for that.

Yeah. There are a lot of features I dont use. I dont use any of the internet supplied content for example. All I care about is recording/ watching Live TV and watching any ripped media I happen to have on the server. 

[ewitte]

On 6/29/2023 at 9:59 AM, lewdicrous said:

Especially when it's discounted multiple times a year.

Usually, 20% off $120 but I've seen 30% off before.  With taxes, it was 103.91 for me.

 

The chances of me utilizing support is pretty slim though.  I mostly needed it for DVR.

[Eaglerino]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:08 AM, LAwLz said:

I don't really get why people use Plex.

Why not use Jellyfin which doesn't lock basic features like hardware-accelerated encoding behind paywalls? Or something like Kodi if you don't want transcoding at all (like me).

make jellyfin apps that 1: exist and 2: don't suck and i'll switch