Plex is in a tough spot. Their main market is likely people who have large libraries of copyright-infringing media, but they can't officially acknowledge that. They want to get revenue somehow to fund the development. My guess is that this is trying to get some money out of folks who have substantial sharing networks but are not paying for plex pass, which seems fair? I think Plex's software is only so-so and I don't love how they make money, but I do love having a streaming server that's actually maintained and understand the weird spot they are in revenue-wise.
I think they also try to provide their own content, blending your library with what they can license for you. It would be cool if they combined your library with a catalogue similar to Netflix in one app.
My pet peeve is that they focus too much on that side of the business (adding new content) while ignoring the streaming experience. There are feature requests on the forum that are being ignored. For example, I would like music artwork per song instead of per album so kids can find their songs more easily. I would also like offline content to be available in the standard catalogue without going through "Downloads". The device that plays the content should prefer that downloaded copy instead of fetching it again via a network when you play it. And so on...
As someone already said, this is probably intended to squeeze some money from the illegal content streaming farms before they close them. They are probably forced to suspend anything suspicious by the legal departments, and this way, they get a bit out of it.
Yah - they just announced they are ceasing to maintain their "watch together" feature, which I love and use often. I get that they are a small company and must focus their attention but their priorities do not feel like those of a company that's funded by their users. That said, their fees are quite low so I suspect they are in a situation where most people won't pay more - kind of a tragedy of the commons for a free-at-point-of-service product.
I know it's not possible due to licensing bullshit but I'd pay a premium for TV/Movies that I owned (DRM free downloads). I have no issue paying for content, but it's a sad state of affairs that Plex is the best experience you can get for TV/Movies and a legal alternative does not exist.
I would guess a good number of plex setups cost more than "all streaming services" x "lifetime of plex server", I know some people where this is the case. They could have paid for every streaming service for over a decade for what they put into their Plex/media server.
