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.
Plex has been going downhill for a bit now. FAST is killing it.
I'm not sure how streaming compares to your own curated content. I mean sure in overall convenience for the average person FAST wins, but that's not the core audience for Plex. If they're competing with FAST then it would mean there was a major shift in it's users and I don't think it has. Nobody who's enjoyed having a NAS full of on demand content (and invested time and hardware) will just chuck it and go "ah yes streaming random stuff with ads was better after all".
If you ask me, Plex should take a hard look at what Emby and Jellyfin are doing right because that's their main competition. I understand they have to make money but locking everything behind their remote server is fundamentally flawed when I can't access a server sitting two feet away from me without a major detour over the internet. They should have integrated with existing solutions like Authelia, reverse proxies and Talescale not piss against the wind.
Fully agree
Yeah this is one of the reasons I don't like companies that profit directly of of pirating. It never ends well and eventually someone is going to figure out they can just buy the company instead of competing on convenience.
One of the main things that made me make the switch to Jellyfin last year was the constant pushing of the ad-supported and other internet based streaming content. I was getting tired of pinning my local media libraries only to have them buried at the bottom of the list again under all the other streaming content after the client apps would update on my family's Rokus. Hardware transcoding is also a nice bonus since I only used Plex's free tier.
This is my problem as well. My old-ass Samsung TV has Plex, and after Samsung totally fucked up smart view, it's my best alternative. Oh well, maybe I need to invest in a dongle of some sort.
Good news! There is a Jellyfin Tizen build available and it works great. Check it out.
There is a relatively high barrier for this as you do need to build, sign, and push it to your TV.
There used to be a Tizen app, but Jellyfin team had many issues with Samsung. Maybe a Kodi plugin would work?
FAST?
Free ad-supported streaming television
what is that?
In the article. Free Ad Supported sTreaming = FAST.
All the embedded LIVE TV or Movies from Plex are all ad supported streaming media not coming from your own Plex server.
I don't want any of that on my Plex instance and the focus on FAST has been a clear shift in strategy.
My girlfriend asked me why she gets ads on Plex, first i didn't believe her, but then she showed me them, as a lifetime customer, i was furious until i found out that she was watching something outside my library.
This is a feature, but they should tag it much more obvious.
oh that's right. Shit is fucking annoying. I blocked all of that out, which is why I forgot I wanted to switch to Jellyfin in the first place lol.
It's in the post body, Free Ad-supported Streaming.
My elderly parents are responsible for some FAST views thinking that they were watching something from my library.
I never really watch FAST but aren't most of it softcore porns 😂
That would be better than any FAST I’ve seen.