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Liberating Music and Video

“We want to liberate people’s music,” said Keith Valory, CEO of Plex. Keith was referring to the relatively new music features Plex introduced to their popular personal media server software. Like the video and photo aspects of their product, consumers are able to consume music on virtually any device, wherever they are, and they are not tied to a proprietary media store or platform.

More than in-home transcoding and streaming, Valory explains that the Plex software creates a rich content experience through the addition of metadata from Sony’s Gracenote service and relevant, ad-free music videos through a relationship with online music video purveyor, Vevo. Some of the other cool features, include the ability to share content, whether music, video or photos, with others via a PIN and a secure connection (using high quality SSL certificates).

The media server software runs on PCs (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) or NAS devices and, on the client side, there are apps for Android, iOS. smart TV, game console, or streaming device. (e.g. Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire).

Plex has a freemium business model, whereby they do not charge for many of their cool features (including the secure connections). The premium model (ranging from $4.99/month to $149 for a lifetime membership) provide additional features such as synchronization of media to various cloud storage services, automatic photo uploads and the aforementioned Vevo ad-free music videos. This is definitely software that service providers should look at closely as they determine different ways they can help their customers add value to their broadband connections.

 

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