According to this Forbes article [1], Plex earns the majority of their revenue from selling ads in their streaming platform:

> Valory said that Plex, which currently does not disclose financial information, generates roughly 20 percent of its revenues from member subscriptions, which unlock premium capabilities of its media platform, compared to 80 percent from the ad business.

So possibly they are just trying to extract as much money as possible from their "legacy" userbase while they can, with the expectation that people hosting their own media libraries are a dwindling market.

Looking at their different features offered in different pricing plans [2], it seems like their strategy is to make money on sharing media libraries with friends and family. $70/year isn't a huge amount to simplify streaming to other (non-technical) people on a variety of different devices. And I suspect some plex users are charging for their access to their media libraries - even if it's something informal like accepting donations or asking for a payment on venmo - in which case the fees would just be a small operating cost.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2024/04/17/venerab...

[2] https://www.plex.tv/plans/

While I'm a lucky lifetime Plex pass holder, the service I get with my own self hosted setup is leagues ahead of anything I could pay for. I would probably pay for a Plex subscription if I started today. I hope Jellyfin improves its remote streaming UX, subtitle management, and app polish, because it's a pretty good contender otherwise.

There are lots of folks self-hosting the music app Roon and paying for it.

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