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 programming mixes, and more recently, a ChatGPT-powered “Sonic Sage” […]

Well this is cool. Now time for me to a media server again.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.caEnglish
    34·
    1 year ago

    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

    • Debs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      131·
      1 year ago

      I’m confused by this comment. Are you recommending it or nah?

      • twistedtxb@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        The app is great! But if you’re used to micromanage you songs, you gonna have a bad time.

          • twistedtxb@lemmy.caEnglish
            71·
            1 year ago

            It’s not a matter of Plex not picking it up correctly. More a matter of what you’re limited to do afterwards with the data.

            And once you’re there, you’re stuck in the closed ecosystem.

            But hey I’m still using Plexamp so they must be doing some things right

        • Cyanogenmon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          I honestly still use iTunes as a manger for my music, and doubletwist on android to sync solely because it moves over the smart playlists as well. I have WAY more music than necessary and I’m very meticulous about what music goes where.

          If the iTunes playlists could sync natively to plex it really wouldn’t be that much of an issue and I’d stream from my server :/.

          • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Same. iTunes and winamp are still the best, imo. I use Plex to stream my library but all my management is done in the other two apps

            Btw, there is an itunes extension for Plex that will display your playlists. I think it’s built in but you need to enable it

            • Cyanogenmon@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Last I checked it doesn’t work with smart playlists :(. I’ll check into it again, it may have been updated.

              • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Oh my bad. Yeah I don’t think smart playlists work, at least not for me :/

          • twistedtxb@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I feel you. I got tired of iTunes and migrated everything thing to Plex for the sake of usability / device compatibility, and I am dumbfounded by the lack of basic features in Plex music.

            They basically applied the features of Plex Movies over to Plex Music without really thinking about it much.

            • Cyanogenmon@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Yep that’s exactly what I thought too. I do like how simple the movie/tv management CAN be (assuming naming structures are correct) but a lot is lost in the weeds of simplicity.

              Well, TV management is easy unless it’s anime (looking at you DBZ). Or looney toons. Ended up having to buy a license to file bot for dbz.

    • soda3x@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Concept1037@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I agree, the app is great and as you said it would be nice to be able to edit or remove albums/songs that don’t display properly.

  • uglytruck@kbin.social
    245·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • jeebs@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • LimitedDuck@septic.winEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Be sure to update the factory files to point it to a better external player. The built in one for Jellyfin sounds terrible.

      • uglytruck@kbin.social
        13·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • derekvof@beehaw.org
      9·
      1 year ago

      Actually there is a Jellyamp which works with Jellyfin although not as feature complete as Plexamp

      • LimitedDuck@septic.winEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
      4·
      1 year ago

      Plexamp is one of the main reasons I continue to use Plex. Does Jellyfin have anything close to how awesome plexamp is?

  • American_Jesus@lemm.eeEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    Don’t get why people gets so exited for this when there’s better software without paywall and open-source like Navidrome or Funkwhale.

    If you going to self-host, use a dedicated software

  • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Welp_im_damned@lemdro.idOPEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I use oto for local playback and Symfonium for streaming (even though it’s clunky as fuck when it comes to organizing albums by data and discovery)

    • llama@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, this doesn’t quite whip the llama’s ass. The only obvious resemblance / possible inspiration I see is the name? …which is kind of… eh…

      • aruraios@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        “Has visualizations”
        So did Windows Media Player, plus Plexamp’s just can’t compare to Milkdrop

        • llama@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Aah, MilkDrop, nothing comes even close. I still stay on the 32-bit version of foobar2000 to be able to run MilkDrop with it since the plug-in that makes it possible hasn’t been updated.

          And yeah, what an empty statement again, sure seems like drawing the comparison was 100% for clickbait’s sake.

          • Gork@beehaw.orgEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Have you tried Butterchurn Visualizer? You need to allow it access to your microphone and play sound through your speakers, but it is one of the better desktop visualizers along with ProjectM on Android.

            • llama@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I have tried (and bought the android version of) ProjectM but I still prefer the MilkDrop presets although IIRC they should be compatible, I just never got around to moving them over. Butterchurn though, first time hearing about it; gonna give it a spin, thanks for the recommendation!

  • Kioga@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • Kioga@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        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?

        • Welp_im_damned@lemdro.idOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Same thing happened to me as well. So I assumed it was some server side update that hasn’t gotten pushed out yet

    • MxM111@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes, the same way I can watch movies for free on Netflix, after I sign in with my account.