I love Plex. It’s easily the best tool for managing all my personal media. Streaming videos and accessing my photo library from anywhere and on any device. I’m also a pretty big fan of all the nice little tools that Plex Labs offers for nerds like me. But by far the most important use of Plex for me, is streaming my absolutely massive music library.

In case my previous posts haven’t made it clear, I’m not a fan of the music streaming services out there. I’ve tried quite a few of them, tried their subscription plans, and eventually have rid myself of them. The last one I’ve retired is Spotify. I really, really don’t like Spotify.

First there’s the issue of the unethical treatment of musicians. I’ve heard complaints from many musician friends in this regard, but I didn’t know exactly how bad things were until some time ago I collaborated with a friend on an album, which he later put on Spotify. That’s when I got the full picture of what Spotify’s policies [including the infamous Pay for Play] actually translate to, for musicians.

Then there’s the issue of [subscription] audio quality. Let’s just say that the quality is effectively not as advertised [ton of articles out there explain the technical reasons for this]. This is a pretty big deal for me as an audiophile who can hear the difference. But even worse is all the missing music. Many musicians have removed their music from Spotify due to the said ethical /quality issues. Many independent musicians never end up on Spotify. And there’s also regional limitations as to which albums you can access.

I knew that eventually I’d be moving away from streaming services altogether in favour of streaming my own library. With the release of Plexamp last year this has finally happened.

Track view / album view

Plexamp is a music app for Plex, developed by Plex Labs. It’s available for all my devices, and it’s pretty darn perfect. Plex server streams lossless audio and Plexamp has no issues with the playback of massive FLACS, so I don’t have to put up with compromised audio quality anymore.

Streaming my own library means that I have access to all the great music that would never be available on Spotify. Music that would normally be available only through Bandcamp, netlabels, demoscene related websites, and so on. As well as everything else that’s missing from Spotify due to political or ethical reasons. It also means that when I pay for music, the money ends up in the right place. It means I don’t support companies that mistreat artists.

Another interesting bit is that the Plex server connects to Last.fm, which means that no matter which Plex app on which device you use, the music you play always gets scrobbled. It’s also possible to share music from your server with friends who also use Plex. Offline listening is also a possibility since the albums or entire collections are downloadable.

And then, let’s face it, there’s the very important matter of the eye candy. And Plexamp is absolutely that. The app [on every device I’ve used it on so far] is well designed, user friendly and really quite good looking.

I will probably still end up using Spotify et al when I’m searching for a piece of music that’s not yet in my library. But for any actual listening purposes, it’s now just Plex/Plexamp and I’m absolutely loving it.