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.
Sure thing. I had some issues with jellyfin transpiling some series, the Android TV app was unable to skip forward for example, and sometimes it stopped reproducing (WiFi issues, sure but they didn't happen with emby). I only had to pay like 5€ total for the android app, and the server is completely free. I would switch to jellyfin if their streaming app / service were as good, but being the only one in the household that cares, having already paid the single payment to emby and being the one that has to fix issues on movie night while my partner is side eyeing me for changing shit again, I won't bother for a good while
(^_^')Edit: Just tested jellyfin with some random animes I have. the AndroidTV app isn't as seamless as the Android app, and changing subtitles can only be done inside the app, it pauses the app for like 3-4 seconds and forwarding takes 3-4 seconds too. Sadly, it's not a quality experience. This is really weird since the TV is connected through cable to the server and the phone isn't, but all the mentioned issues don't happen on the pone. I might have to sideload the android app and see how it works.