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.
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
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