[freetime2]

According to this Forbes article [1], Plex earns the majority of their revenue from selling ads in their streaming platform:

> Valory said that Plex, which currently does not disclose financial information, generates roughly 20 percent of its revenues from member subscriptions, which unlock premium capabilities of its media platform, compared to 80 percent from the ad business.

So possibly they are just trying to extract as much money as possible from their "legacy" userbase while they can, with the expectation that people hosting their own media libraries are a dwindling market.

Looking at their different features offered in different pricing plans [2], it seems like their strategy is to make money on sharing media libraries with friends and family. $70/year isn't a huge amount to simplify streaming to other (non-technical) people on a variety of different devices. And I suspect some plex users are charging for their access to their media libraries - even if it's something informal like accepting donations or asking for a payment on venmo - in which case the fees would just be a small operating cost.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2024/04/17/venerab...

[2] https://www.plex.tv/plans/

[fg137]

I have seen people talking about this "hosting a small streaming service for friends" thing, and I really have trouble understanding that. It just seems a bad idea to expose such a server to the Internet and maintain it, even with a VPN, and I don't know what kind of friends they have. That's a lot of effort for very questionable return, considering the requirements for your hard drive space, bandwidth, the time it takes to curate your library including "acquisition" and pruning etc.

[jonathanlydall]

It's not an open server that anyone can just connect to, only specific Plex accounts that you invite.

They also don't need to know anything about how to connect to your server, it simply shows up as a server name in the list on their "app" or the Plex website, there is no need for dynamic DNS or VPN or anything like that as Plex's servers do a kind of "service discovery" automatically.

It does require you exposing the Plex TCP port to the internet, so you are relying on them making sure there are no vulnerabilities. You could probably do a VPN approach and give them a URL they can enter into a web-browser, but it's unlikely to work on TV and mobile apps.

I've given access to my Plex server to my siblings and parents and it's great. Since I got a decently fast fibre line, no more having to manually copy shows/movies they want to watch over a LAN or using a USB HDD or memory stick.

[phil21]

> It just seems a bad idea to expose such a server to the Internet and maintain it

Why? Nerds have been hosting services for their friends and family for decades now. It was one of the primary benefits of knowing an IT nerd. They probably had a few servers co-located at work or with their friend who worked for the local ISP. These days with cloud I suppose it's changed, but I didn't think this skillset had eroded that much.

Hosting services on the public internet isn't very scary. If your Plex server gets zero day'ed, you just reinstall it and start over. Chances are that will never happen.

I host the media server, you come help me fix my plumbing when I need it sort of thing.

> That's a lot of effort for very questionable return, considering the requirements for your hard drive space, bandwidth, the time it takes to curate your library including "acquisition" and pruning etc.

This part, sure. But it's like anything else you do for family and friends. When I ran an e-mail server for everyone it was a giant pain that eventually became not worth it once the free providers got better and more accessible.

Plus the whole "curating" thing is the fun part, usually! Most of that stuff is usually about 98% automated either way so the "job" is largely fixing automation when it chokes.

[iamacyborg]

They’re not “friends”, they’re people paying a small fee to conveniently access pirated media.