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.
I use the Roku app every day. It’s very good.
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.
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 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.
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.
I’ve been using Swiftfin on my Apple TV with zero problems. Its a lot more simple than Plex.
It’s a paid app, but infuse works very well on apple TV
They have “Swiftfin” but it’s had two updates in two years and it’s close to useless
they have an app on apple tv thats been working well with unraid and a jellyfin docker
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.
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.
I haven’t tried jelly fin so I’ll have to try it out; on my Apple devices I use Infuse Pro.
That being said, I really enjoy Kodi even though I know many despite it. Kodi to me is Firefox pre v56/57 where even though it shows its age, the customizability and utility is what makes it what it is.
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 stamp I fast forwarded to>” 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.
How is it making double digit millions? Through deals with companies and plex passes?
