Plex to End Support for Podcasts on Friday

[MacRumors]

Plex is set to end support for podcasts on Friday, the company behind the media management platform has announced.

Web Shows on the Plex media server will also close this week, the company said in a post on the Plex forum, although most of the content the section hosted will still be available to users elsewhere on the platform.

As part of our ongoing effort to make sure we're spending our time and energy in ways that best serve our awesome user community, we've made the decision to end support for Podcasts and Web Shows within Plex. We recognize this decision will impact several of you greatly, and we apologize for the inconvenience it will cause. You can continue to access these features within Plex until Friday, April 15th, 2022, at which point they will no longer be available.

Plex didn't say exactly why it had decided to end support for podcasts and close the Web Shows portal of its media management offering, but the wording suggests that neither section was being used enough to make them worth the time and money spent maintaining them.

For those who want to export their podcast subscription list in OPML format for use in other players, the Plex forum post provides instructions on how to go about it before support closes.

As noted by XDA Developers, Plex podcast support has largely stood still since it was introduced in 2018, and there are several complaints from users in the Plex forums about buggy performance and other issues going all the way back to its inception.

Article Link: Plex to End Support for Podcasts on Friday

 

[t0pher]

As part of our ongoing effort to make sure we're spending our time and energy in ways that best serve our awesome user community, we've made the decision to end support for Podcasts and Web Shows within Plex. We recognize this decision will impact several of you greatly, and we apologize for the inconvenience it will cause.

That’s some classic corporate double speak right there!!

Translation:: we are stopping this thing, our excuse is that not many people use it and using the word ‘several’ makes it sound like just a handful of the thousands of customers use it.

I’ll have to double check but I think my bbc radio 4 (more of less, the Apollo missions) podcasts are via my Plex server to my Sonos.

I see Sonos now supports bbc sounds so I shouldn’t miss out on bbc content with Plex dropping support for podcasts, just need to do some sonos config.

 

[W2u7Yw4HaD]

Yeah, I didn't think it even supported podcasts until now.. But would never have been my go-to place for podcasts in the first place..

 

[Powerbooky]

I remember when "podcasts" began as an audio extra in an RSS feed. At the time RSS feeds were pretty popular. Meanwhile RSS isn't supported anymore in Safari. Where as the original "podcast" idea was to download it first and play it offline later (on your ipod), that often doesn't work anymore. Nowadays the name "podcast" is used for pretty much any video/audio clip spread over the internet. Some now require their own app and/or can only be listened to online.
In a way Youtube has taken over the podcast function.

Seems logical for Plex to drop the original podcast support then.

It was fun, while it lasted.

 

[t0pher]

Only really useful for some of the podcasts that where not natively supported by something, in my case Sonos could not play bbc iplayer stuff for some reason (Sonos blamed the BBC) now bbc sounds is supported but only if you login using your tv license credentials, which sucks.

I don’t think iPlayer (on things not Sonos) needed authentication but was geo locked to the UK.

Now the bbc want to know who’s watching what. No different to the other streaming services, just a huge change.

 

[Codestud]

Yet they've spent a ton of time adding this "Discover" content aggregator thing, which I looked at once and immediately turned off. I don't want Plex as a content aggregator for online services. It's for my local media on my server and that's it.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

The Plex companies really do seem to take the “Throw everything at the walls and see what sticks” thing seriously, and even if some people like some of teh remaining stains, they remove them.

 

[Dorv]

Yet they've spent a ton of time adding this "Discover" content aggregator thing, which I looked at once and immediately turned off. I don't want Plex as a content aggregator for online services. It's for my local media on my server and that's it.

In using the Discover tab only once and not going back, I've instantly found it significantly more useful than Podcasts on my TV.

 

[iMerik]

That’s some classic corporate double speak right there!!

Translation:: we are stopping this thing, our excuse is that not many people use it and using the word ‘several’ makes it sound like just a handful of the thousands of customers use it.

I’ll have to double check but I think my bbc radio 4 (more of less, the Apollo missions) podcasts are via my Plex server to my Sonos.

I see Sonos now supports bbc sounds so I shouldn’t miss out on bbc content with Plex dropping support for podcasts, just need to do some sonos config.

I use Pocket Casts, which SONOS supports, which keeps everything in sync within Pocket Casts on SONOS, phone, website version. https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3519?language=en_US

 

[Zorn]

Actually glad about this, Plex is an amazing app for the things it's focused toward. The podcasts support was never very good anyway, and I'm not sure who was looking to Plex for this functionality in the first place. There are many superior dedicated apps. The web shows thing is 100% good riddance, I didn't need more advertising filled junk that was never asked for.

 

[munpip214]

Less than a week’s notice? That doesn’t give too much time for people to find an alternative or export their list.

 

[cylack]

Plex lost its way over the years, going from a sleek piece of Mac specific software to the current bloated Electron garbage that tries to do everything. Even though I had puchased a lifetime license, I finally got tired of waiting for them to make an Apple Silicon native Mac app and server app. I switched to Infuse and am never looking back. Infuse is M1 native and lighnting fast compared to Plex.

 

[ArrayDecay]

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?

 

[kingtj1971]

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?

It's just what you suggest, in the same way the game of baseball is "some guys running around a field trying to catch a ball someone whacks with a piece of wood".

I mean, it's essentially a product that consists of both a "server" and a "client" piece. The "Plex Media Server" runs on a machine configured for it and lets you store a collection of video and audio content that it indexes/catalogs and can then stream optimally to a Plex "client" -- which can be software running on a Windows PC, a Mac, an iPad/iPhone, Android device, or built into various smart TVs on the market or set-top boxes like Apple TV.

It works on your local network or can stream over the Internet, supporting "user accounts" you create on the server so specific people you know can be granted access to parts of, or to your complete library of content.

As time went on, the Plex authors kept bolting on new features, so it went from focusing on your own personal video, music or photo collections to supporting all these Internet-based streaming options and even broadcast TV if you have the right TV tuner board installed in a Plex server. Podcast support is another one of those things they added to fill out the offerings a Plex client gave people....

 

[VictorTango777]

Is anyone else getting tired of streaming applications like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount that force users into single line horizontal scrolling on a desktop computer? On some of these services, you have to click more than 10 times in order see all the titles in a film strip. There is no fast horizontal scrolling, no way to jump to the beginning or end of the strip, and no way to expand the strip to show all titles at once. Did the developers of these interfaces bother to test for scalability, or did they just assume that if a single line horizontal strip works for 5 items and requiring only 1 click, then it will also work for hundreds of items in a strip?

 

[PeteBurgh]

What the hell is Plex, anyway? Is is just a way to stream movies and other media from a NAS to an end-user device, or is there something more to it?

Well, therein lies the question. A lot of users (including myself) would like it to be the former: a server-client set up that allows me to access my own media. That is how it began. But there seems to be strong economic incentives (and maybe some user demand?) to make it a broader product that is also a gateway to all sorts of streaming content.

It does create a tension between different kinds of users (or current and potential future users?).

going from a sleek piece of Mac specific software to the current bloated Electron garbage

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the neither the player nor server apps use Electron.

I think it's a bit harsh to call it 'garbage'. For me it's somewhere between 'fine' and 'meh' - yeah, it's not very Mac-like (what is these days), but it's reasonably fast, easy to navigate, and doesn't hog loads of system resources. I like Infuse too.

 

[t0pher]

Yet they've spent a ton of time adding this "Discover" content aggregator thing, which I looked at once and immediately turned off. I don't want Plex as a content aggregator for online services. It's for my local media on my server and that's it.

I need to look at that, i was hoping it’d do a better job than apple.

I love sci-fi. I really just want to search all the services I subscribe to for sci-fi and then sort those results by “free to me (because I’ve paid to subscribe)”,
Then some order of: popularity, date, resolution, movie or show etc etc etc.

 

[_Spinn_]

I never liked the way Plex implemented podcasts. I wish the files were downloaded to my Plex server and served from there that way I could keep an archive of my favorite podcasts with the rest of my digital media.

 

[edrozenberg]

Plex removes features nobody used in order to focus on developing new features nobody wants. It will take them another few decades but they will eventually accept that people who use it only want to access local media files and don't want their "media access" centralized aggregated tracked and monetized.

 

[rhett7660]

Plex lost its way over the years, going from a sleek piece of Mac specific software to the current bloated Electron garbage that tries to do everything. Even though I had puchased a lifetime license, I finally got tired of waiting for them to make an Apple Silicon native Mac app and server app. I switched to Infuse and am never looking back. Infuse is M1 native and lighnting fast compared to Plex.

I did the same for the video portion of the product, but for music, Plex is still the best in my book. Between the Plex App and Plexamp, I couldn't be happier! But for the video stuff, I was having way to many issues with it, so I finally broke down and bought Infuse. No issues. Everything I have thrown at it, there has been no issues.

 

[JoeShades]

Plex removes features nobody used in order to focus on developing new features nobody wants. It will take them another few decades but they will eventually accept that people who use it only want to access local media files and don't want their "media access" centralized aggregated tracked and monetized.

Thanks, didn't know you were the people's spokesperson

 

[JWD]

PMS is the only good thing going, forced me to buy another lifetime subscription (Infuse). The only innovation lately I’ve seen from Plex is being able to record off my TV antenna.

 

[Ethosik]

Oh for the love of.....I JUST got Plex after I saw I can consolidate three different apps into one (including Podcasts).

 

[Dobbs2]

Oh for the love of.....I JUST got Plex after I saw I can consolidate three different apps into one (including Podcasts).

Look at Jellyfin.

 

[0924487]

I never liked the way Plex implemented podcasts. I wish the files were downloaded to my Plex server and served from there that way I could keep an archive of my favorite podcasts with the rest of my digital media.

They can never do that as it would violate copyrights.