Plexamp, the music player originally incubated by the Labs division of media company Plex, is now free, the company announced today. The project was first launched in 2017 as Plex’s own spin on the classic Winamp media player app, offering visualizations to accompany your tunes, tools for programmin...
Well this is cool. Now time for me to a media server again.
The app is great! I'm glad it's finally available to everyone.
But Plex's music support is clearly an afterthought. Anemic ID3 support, impossible to edit tags, even worse playlist editing support, etc. It's quite sad
Yeah I'd say that's more of a Plex core complaint rather than Plexamp. Plexamp has been great but plex has a long way to go in terms of music support. iTunes library management was much better than what plex has.
I use Jellyfin - music, shows, movies... it's open-source and has a lot of features Plex doesn't including, not having to create an account. It's your's to do what you want.
That's not really a great feature, but, is the user experience easy to use for sharing? Meaning when I have my tech inept family members watch at their home from my server, can they use it as easy as Plex?
The sign-in experience is where you're going to get a lot of friction. Your users are going to need your server address. They'll have to log in to devices with username/password including TVs unless they have signed in once already somewhere else on the network like a desktop. Then you can set up an Easy PIN code or use Quick Connect, but those are hidden behind the user settings menu.
The amount of work is on the server side, but they are forks of the same code. The sharing side is not as complex. Plex has hit an impass on remaining solvent as a business. Emby is even in a better situation than Plex is and quite frankly, I don't see a reason to use them when Jellyfin is an option.
If you're talking about this, then it hasn't seen an update since 2021. Maybe you mean Finamp? It's a serviceable app, but it's very simple and dated-looking compared to Plexamp. Definitely better than the Jellyfin app though which is just a web wrapper.
Eh, I like Plexamp’s features, but the app is not exactly free, more “freemium.” All the compelling features that you’d want to use it for are behind the subscription paywall. DJ, track and album radio, the unique features aren’t free.
Also, at least on iOS the app feels clunky and sluggish with long delays when skipping, scrubbing, playing, and pausing. (EDIT - turns out this is specifically an issue when using Airplay, it's fine for local playback).
My wife uses Plexamp on desktop (Mac and PC) and it seems good there. I personally tend to use the WiiM app for Wiim mini with Asset UPnP server.
I heard about this yesterday and I downloaded the plexamp app on my windows desktop to try it. When I ran it, the first thing it had me do was sign into it with my plex account. It then tossed an error at me telling me that I need to subscribe to plex pass to use it. I don’t understand the “free” part about this plexamp going free announcement.
I had the same assumption. Or maybe nobody uses the windows version, lol. I did a Google search and checked the plex forums, nobody was talking about the issue. I just sort of walked away after that.
Still, very odd to make an announcement that’s literally not true. Gotta be something weird on my end I guess?