Plex rumored to be bringing streaming services to its platform

Plex has been expanding its reach throughout 2018, and it looks like it might have a whole new gameplan for 2019.

Plex began as a version of the Kodi media player with an emphasis on organizing users’ local files.

From there, Plex expanded to add more and more media until it could load a user’s personal television collection, photo collection and music library along with movies.

Plex expanded again within the last year, adding support for podcasts, news, web-shows, live TV and even Tidal integration to help round out the platform.

Plex users are currently able to access web-shows (like high-end Youtube content), podcasts, music from two sources, news, movies, television and pictures all in one simple platform.

Now, a report from German site Golem suggests that Plex is going to try and incorporate streaming services in the same way that it added Tidal, meaning users should expect to see movies and television from other sources in the Plex app.

Plex’s co-founder and chief product officer Scott Olechowski previously told TechCrunch that his company is looking at entering the ad-supported movie and television game, so the platform could launch a streaming service of its own, alongside adding third-party streaming networks.

This could mean big things for Plex as it looks to find more and more reasons to convince users to use its platform for more than just watching locally stored movies and television shows.

While this seems like a strong move for the service moving forward, I have some doubts, based on my time using Tidal with Plex.

Being able to mix local music and songs from Tidal into one playlist is the killer reason for bringing Tidal into Plex, but using Tidal within Plex is basically like opening up another app within the app you’re already in.

Simply put, the experience is much worse than simply using the native Tidal app.

Unless Plex can take content from a video streaming service and place it right beside the other material in Plex, streaming service integration will be more of a hassle than anything else.

However, if the company can pull it off, it would be game-changing for the streaming industry.

Sadly, I don’t see Plex integrating streaming services into its platform anytime soon. Apple has been trying a similar strategy with its TV app, but Cupertino has struggled to get big names like Netflix onto the platform.

Still, if Plex is able to establish similar deals with smaller players like Amazon Prime Video, CBC Gem or Crave, then it would come closer to Apple’s level.

Source: Android Authority