Plex is best known as the server software you can use to host your own streaming movie and TV collection, but it also supports music libraries. Even better, the dedicated Plexamp application gives you a more streamlined music player for your mobile devices and computers. Plex is now making the Plexamp player available to everyone, but with a few catches.
Plexamp is a dedicated music player app that connects to your existing Plex library, giving you a way to enjoy your music without the extra clutter of movies, TV shows, and everything else in your general Plex library. It was a great addition to the Plex ecosystem when it was first introduced, but it was only available to paying Plex Pass members. That’s now changing, as the base app experience is now available to free Plex users.
With a free Plex account, Plexamp supports gapless playback, fades, pre-caching, loudness leveling, visualizations, and themes. You can also access Plexamp from Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Siri, as well as stream your music over AirPlay and Chromecast. The functionality locked to Plex Pass includes downloads support, mix builders, the ChatGPT-powered “Sonic Sage” playlist creator, automatic sample rate matching, the headless remote client for Raspberry Pi and other similar devices, and the equalizer.
Plex said in a blog post, “Plexamp was born out of a combination of passion for music and Plex. It was one of the early fruits of Plex Labs—the place for employee passion projects and community creativity. Built by a handful of people in their spare time, Plexamp may or may not have started over a few whisk[e]y sours. Over the years Plexamp has evolved from a small, highly opinionated music player, to being the flagship place for music in Plex. As a standalone application, it provides a (highly customizable) focused experience for music, with features found nowhere else. It’s also everywhere you’d want to be, including iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux.”
It’s great to see Plexamp expand to all Plex users, and there’s a surprising amount of features that are now free to everyone. The main appeal for the Plex Pass option is probably the option to download music for offline playback — it’s great to keep the music going when you pass into a dead zone for cell signals, or if your server at home has a problem.
The Plex mobile app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The desktop versions for Mac, Windows, and Linux can be downloaded from the Plexamp site.
Source: Plex Blog
