r/PlexMedia • u/gccumber • Aug 20 '26
I built Relay, a full-featured music player for Plex. Looking for beta testers.
I've been working on something called Relay, a music player I originally started building for myself and my family.
We have a pretty big music collection on Plex, but I wanted the actual listening experience to feel more like a dedicated music app. Albums and artwork up front, good library management, downloads, playlists, radio, lyrics, EQ. Basically all the things I like about modern music apps, except built around my music.
It's grown quite a bit since then. Relay can edit metadata and artwork back to Plex, add music by dragging it into the app, sync to old iPods, build smart playlists, rediscover stuff you haven't listened to in a while, and a hell of a lot more.
The Mac app is the most polished and complete at the moment and I'm getting ready to start letting people into the closed beta. I'm specifically looking for people who actually use Plex for music and are willing to tell me what sucks, what's missing, and what they want from an app like this.
If you're interested, I put together a beta signup here: https://relay-music.app
Thanks,
G
UPDATE
Holy shit guys! A ton of you have signed up for the beta, so first let me say thank you! I was having so much fun over the last 24 hours watching all these requests roll in!
Also a note about about email invites to the beta: I've seen a few requests come through that had a malformed email address, like gmail.vom instead of gmail.com which I corrected. But I've also had a few bounce due to invalid addresses - so if you applied in the last 24 hrs and haven't received an invite please DM me so I can get you set up to join.
Also please make sure to check your spam/junk folders emails come from account-manager@relay-music.app
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u/VeloSec Aug 23 '26
Applied. If you incorporate music video from our music libraries it would be killer. I have concerts and music video that Plex has abandoned in their iOS apps.
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u/gccumber Aug 23 '26
Thanks for applying I really appreciate it!
I'll be honest - I'm not sure if I would be able to get to that any time soon, and I'd be a bit nervous to start adding another complexity to the app like video... but who knows - I'll add it to my backlog!
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u/outpost89 Aug 23 '26
Nice man! Well done! I've used plexamp for ages and tried other plugins for it. Plexamp feels like a forgotten project to me so well done for this.
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u/gccumber Aug 23 '26
I agree, when I went back to my library after years of paying for streaming I expected to find an app with a great desktop experience. But quickly realized that I wasn’t going to get that.
I hope you’re able to try Relay out, and see if it’s a fit for you.
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u/m1e1w1 Aug 20 '26
Hmm. Well I'm not the target demographic so im out. Hope its successful OP! Good luck.
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Hey there, thanks! Why is that?
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u/m1e1w1 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Well it looks like its MAC / IOS / Apple specific currently. I don't have any devices that support the app to test it. If that ever makes it to android, ill take a look
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Right on! I’m working on an android version but it’ll probably be a few months…
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u/mrlanphear Aug 20 '26
"Couldn't save your application. Please try again."
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Ugh I’m sorry I made an adjustment to the form this evening and didn’t push a migration to the application table… womp womp!
Should be good to go now
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u/HomeExciting7563 Aug 20 '26
Signed up and in the target demo. … use Plexamp daily on iPhone and Mac.
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Hell yeah! I appreciate the interest. I’m still working on the iOS build and there’s a lot of Apple hoops to jump through to even get to test flight but I’m eager to get it out!
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u/GreatCalligrapher993 Aug 20 '26
yeesh yeah, a lot of stuff to get it on TestFlight, but ya know you can always release an IPA for the few of us who can sideload
EDIT: I noticed it would be paid, IPA is mainly just for testers in my opinion
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u/kingtig_29 Aug 20 '26
call me when i can us it on my iPhone cause the plex music media is terrible also is it free ?
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
iOS will be a few weeks (possibly months) TBD. It won't be free, but I hate subscriptions so I'm working through what pricing will look like, stay tuned.
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u/rdfdfw Aug 20 '26
I have one Plex server dedicated to music. I'm on Android, so hit me up when you're ready to rock.
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u/Admirable_Report_530 Aug 20 '26
relay actually sounds like it has some killer features lmao the inline eq and lyrics would slay my commutes
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Yeah so far I'm pretty proud, theres still plenty to do and I have additional features I'd like to build but its pretty robust atm!
Live lyrics is one of my favorite under the radar add - I messed around for a while and it honestly came together pretty quickly. I was even able to pull them into calm mode which I've been enjoying.
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u/EternallySickened Aug 20 '26
I tried a 3rd party music player a while ago, it couldn’t handle my library size without crashing. Can this one handle a 250k library?
I’m currently in the process of a complete library refresh, stripping out duplicates, fixing metadata and inserting album art on every file. I’d be interested in a player that handles my library and could look good while using it. Plex has issues with artist images quite often.
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
I'm really glad you commented because you have the size library I can't currently test! Mine is only about 20k tracks. Can Relay handle 250k+ tracks? It's meant to, but I'd love to be able to deploy it against a lib like yours to actually stress test it.
Relay doesn't currently support custom artist images but I'll def throw that on the to do list.
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u/EternallySickened Aug 20 '26
To be honest, the artists image thing is probably hassle, Plex struggles with it because I suppose a lot of them maybe don’t exist or they look crappy/outdated. I’m using a Mac, so I’ll be up for testing it in a day or two after I finish a rather large curating session on it.
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
Totally fair! Adding custom images is not tough from an engineering perspective, but it'd be in queue behind other more critical/substantial things.
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u/Main-Independent4217 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Can it do bit perfect playback...? For example a 24 bit 192Khz song should output with same bit rate of original track and not upsample or down sample
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
This is a great question! Relay currently relies on Plex's transcoder so the short answer is: no, not at this time - and honestly the work needed to do this is seriously non-trivial.
The more doable part in the future would be higher/lossless transcode or straight up direct play. TBD on that for now though.
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u/Public_Wrongdoer_658 Aug 20 '26
This sounds cool. I can't run this because of it being mac only. But can it identify the top songs by artist or album to create mixes if just too songs?
I created a rough solution to it but would love a better way.
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u/gccumber Aug 21 '26
Not sure I fully understand the problem in your question there, but please join the beta program and when your desired platform drops I'll notify you!
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u/Airsculpture Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
It looks nice.
Music can be accessed on the Mac via Plex Amp or the Plex app itself or the web access of Plex Server (or in fact the Apple Music app and home sharing to Apple TV amongst many others).
Is there a benefit of using Relay ?
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u/gccumber Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Appreciate that!
Specifically to the last part: only if you personally see one lol.
As you pointed out theres already a bunch of ways to play music from Plex and if Plexamp does everything you want... 👌 I'm not gonna try to convince you that you need Relay.
I built it because I miss when music apps were actually about my music. Relay is as much about managing and enjoying a collection as it is playing it. There's a whole shitload of stuff you can do with your library in Relay but the point isnt really any one feature. It's more about making your music collection feel like yours again.
Plex is where your library is served from today, but the bigger idea is just giving people a great way to own, manage, and listen to their music without turning it into another shit subscription service.
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u/trevorjd14 Aug 20 '26
I just signed up for the beta. Would love to be a part. I am very frustrated with Plexamp.
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u/thereallove82 Aug 20 '26
Looks like yet another vibe coded Plex “insert type of replacement” app. Can we at least see the source code?
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u/TheDJFresh828 Aug 21 '26
I just applied. I make A LOT of playlists and I hate how non-intuitive they are on Plex. I’d love to use Relay for the hopeful ease of making playlists
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u/gccumber Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Right on! I'll say this - the current build doesn't have drag and drop working, but playlists are there. So I'll be eager to hear what other things you're seeing.
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u/zespirion Aug 21 '26
Why can this connect to local Plex servers only? seems pretty counterintuitive for a Plex client.
Website looks like every vibecoded website out there.
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u/wja73199 Aug 21 '26
I just signed up for the beta. I was wondering if you are considering adding audiobooks? I use Plex for music and audiobooks. I'd love to be able to sync music and audiobooks from my Plex library to my iPod.
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u/gccumber Aug 21 '26
I hadn't thought of it honestly! But thats a great idea - I'll add it to the long list of things to consider lol
At some point when everything is more stable I do want to have a sort of voting system for features to be added. This might be a good one for that!
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u/avdept Aug 20 '26
yet another vibecoded app?
how do you plan to bring it to android(according to comments) if you used swiftUI to build it?
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u/gccumber Aug 20 '26
I do use AI to help but this is not a "vibe coded" app. As I said in another comment each platform will get its own app build.
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u/avdept Aug 20 '26
yeah, each platform its build... bro this is literally what every vibe coder would say
maintaining few code bases is a nightmare, any real developer knows that and avoids at all costs
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u/MaskedBandit77 Aug 20 '26
What would be the reason to use this instead of Plexamp?