Wot The Fsck You Say, Spotify?

Edit: A couple times I’ve said eBook while I actually meant Audiobook. I’ve learned that Spotify has a 15 hour limit per month for their free ‘included in premium’ audiobooks. However these are the two books I listened to for free, and even rounding up to 13 hours it doesn’t make sense, unless they count accidental chapter skips which weren’t actually listened to. But it’s clear now that I know about the 15 hour limit, that they are not counting the time listening to paid audiobooks.

First book I listened to for free:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/457e0cd3-50d8-4501-b931-209463c4bcc1.png

Second book I listened to for free:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6bf4396c-d21d-4383-9337-d9f65d3c1dda.png

OG post:

I purchased 3 eBooks in the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (2 came free) and I’m on the final book. 20 minutes left in the last book and this is what Spotify tells me.

I’m over the edge now. I’ve been putting it off too long. I have a nice NUC I purchased about a year ago.

I’m tech inclined, 20 years of hobbyism, know the linux command line well. Work in IT consulting. But I’m busy. Very busy, and unmotivated to do things like hours of research and toying with settings getting things to work, if I ever have the time.

But this is the start of my new personal revolution.

I’ll read the wiki and have read about Sonarr, etc, and I also want movies and shows, but is there anything specifically for eBooks? Looks like Readarr is my best bet? Stripping the DRM of already purchased (and free with Spotify ‘Premium’) books to share on a seedbox is also something I’m willing to take requests on. Is there a way to rip from Spotify if you have a premium account? And what’s the best Android eBook reader (the last 3-4 I tried sucked with pirated eBooks)?

I know I’m sounding like a noob asking everything to be handed to me right now, but I am willing to put in the research and welcome and highly appreciate anyone with tips to point me in the right directions.

Kit,

Tbh as a quick fix your local library almost certainly has this audio book. Finish your book then you can look into piracy.

tacosanonymous,

Sadly, that’s the case less and less these days. Distributors are forcing libraries to use digital resources and gouging them on prices.

USSEthernet,

That would probably explain why mine has 2 digital copies of a book to loan out, and there’s usually a line of 50 people waiting for them.

tacosanonymous,

100%

The loaning models are designed to punish libraries.

Cinner,

You reminded me I do have major regional library card access, if they don’t expire after a couple years.

WarmSoda,

Pretty sure they don’t. If they do though it’s just a simple matter of showing them your ID.

prettybunnys,

Yo always check out your library first before piracy, if you can get it free and traffic your library you ought to

(Just cuz libraries are dope)

Rusty,

Do you mean the book is accessible through the Libby app or do you mean to physically go to the library and get a DVD or something? Because my library for example has a very limited number of books in Libby and the last time my PC had DVD-ROM was in 2008

brbposting,

More often Hoopla than Libby for me in the SF Bay Area!

Don’t look for/notice the physical CDs, even filter them out.

maxprime,

Audiobookbay, My Anonamouse, Audiobookshelf

The_Helmet_Stays_On, (edited )

I have even found some while using soulseek

7u5k3n,

This is the way…

Audiobookshelf is the tits

Edit: It’s so straightforward my hygienist wife can use it.

Dran_Arcana,

Are… hygienists famously known for not being smart? I don’t think that’s a thing lmao

Cinner,

High gymnast? It’s ok my ex-wife is a tard and she’s a pilot now.

Ow My Balls! plays in background

ptz,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

archive.org/details/hhgttg-ab/

Read by Stephen Fry, no less.

Cinner,

The OG HHGTTG is, the prequel and subsequent books in the series are not unfortunately. But I got used to the other guys voice quickly.

ptz,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

Good to know. Someone posted that in a Books community a few months back and I had it bookmarked. So far, I’ve only listened to the first one that Fry narrated.

Cinner,

The Steven Fry narration really drew me in. He’s fantastic. I was bummed when I started listening to the others but quickly got used to it. Martin Freeman is a good narrator, if not as animated and loud as Fry.

florge,

You should give the Douglas Adams narrated ones a try.

Cinner,

He narrated his own?? Hell yeah, I’m going to download them today and give them a re-listen on the suggested apps to see which I like most.

solarvector,

It’s been a while since I had the opportunity for audiobooks, so those specifically I’m a little out of the loop. Audiobookbay was a thing at some point.

For e books… Z-library and/ or Anna’s archive. The reader I use is ReadEra premium, it can handle pretty much any format although default to pick is epub. I don’t think you really need to buy premium, I just did because I wanted to support them. I’ve been using it for forever with almost no problems. You can adjust the things you want (font, spacing, light/dark, etc), but the basic format when reading is very simple once you have it set up

Cinner,

I already use ReadEra for all my documents needs. Does it save progress well with audiobooks?

antipiratgruppen,

I believe he’s using it for ebooks, not audiobooks. I don’t think it’s playing audio.

solarvector,

Ok, audiobook isn’t the same as an ebook.

Spotify is absolute ass for audiobooks and podcasts. I wish there was something better for streaming, although one of these days I’ll get around to self hosting. Maybe after retirement…

Anyway, for audiobooks I used “Voice Audiobook Player”, it’s free and open source, minimal permissions required.

For anyone wondering about podcasts, “Podcast Addict”. It has too many menus and options, can be confusing, but still a million times better than Spotify. Once you have it set up the way you want those options are very nice. Still confusing at times though :D

Cinner,

That’s my fault, I messed up and said ebook a few times while meaning audiobooks.

darkstar,

+1 from me for ReadEra as well, great app.

ashley,
@ashley@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

for ripping music from Spotify, best solution I know is spotdl which just downloads an album or playlist link given to it, and fetches the equivalent from YouTube.

WarmSoda,

You my friend, are a fucking rockstar

Sailing7,

You could also go the route of directly downloading from spotify with Zotify. If you got premium it downloads in full 320kps. (Make sure to use the –download-real-time=True toggle to raise no suspicion for spotify servers. This way you download as fast as if you were listening to the songs/audiobooks yourself. Its a command line tool. Though if it can remove possible DRM Watermarks from the audiostream - no clue. But i wouldnt think they actually do that.

Cinner,

This is exactly what I was looking for!

Sailing7,

Happy, that you found my comment :D

I’ve also searched for such a solution for a longggg time. When i finally found it though… holy moly i was happy about that

FunderPants,

Get on a plexshare/emby share /appbox with a good ebook selection. Save your time.

jasep,

This is the piracy community. A comment like this isn’t very useful without at least a point in the right direction of how to get started doing this. How do you find one?

AlwaysNowNeverNotMe,
AlwaysNowNeverNotMe avatar

Vpn set to northern Europe, audiobookbay

FunderPants, (edited )

There used to be a plex share subreddit that would turn up if you just googled “plex share”. I thought just knowing the services existed would be enough for the guy to search it and turns those up.

But now that I check it seems that reddit shut those subs down about 5 months ago, so I have no idea where people get access to those services now outside direct referrals.

Hominine,
@Hominine@lemmy.world avatar

Haven’t looked at the audiobook player scene on Android since stumbling over Smart Audiobook Player some years ago. I bought the full edition after enjoying it. It has a scraper for images and works well with titles downloaded from audiobookbay.

AbsurdityAccelerator,

It’s a great app. Works really well with android auto, which is how I consume most of my audiobooks.

datavoid,

I tested a few last year, this one is still the best

Cinner,

Does it let you have a folder of books and keep your place when you pause the book or exit the app? Many don’t seem to keep the progress very well.

Hominine,
@Hominine@lemmy.world avatar

Yes

murmelade,

Voice Audiobook Player is great, open source with all the features you want from an audiobook player and none of the bullshit.

Cool Reader for ebooks. Both available on fdroid and googol play store

EvacuateSoul,

I’m all about piracy, but as another alternative, consider seeing if you can get a digital library card somewhere local or multiple and connect them to Libby to borrow books and audio books for 2 weeks at a time

variants,

Lidarr can pull Spotify playlists or followed artists. Also have a look at the trash guides for setting up sonarr and radar, now there’s even a docker that auto co figures your sonarr and radar based off the latest trash guide settings

cyberpunk007,

Whaaaaaat? It can? How does it work? Used to use the aur package spotify-ripper which was awesome, it used my creds and all that and pulled all the metadata from Spotify and it was awesome. I’d just cron it to run weekly against my likes playlist.

Others I’ve seen use Spotify but just pull the song file and nothing else. Does lidarr do a good job? I hate a messy metadata library.

variants,

Yeah it can import information from spotify then search for everything with your Downloader depending on if you torrent or usenet and you can set the quality that you want so it can keep upgrading your library over time as it finds better quality up to the max that you set

cyberpunk007,

So it uses torrents and not Spotify to download? That’s a downer.

GravitySpoiled,

settings > lists

easiest is to use the lidarr script with deemix, it automatically downloads everything.

Gooey0210,

Enshitification!

Showroom7561,

If the experience that a paying customer gets is worse than the experience they get from pirating, then that’s the fault of the company selling that enshitified experience.

It’s wild how modern businesses are trying to kill themselves with every terrible idea they have to make more money.

Zahille7,

As shitty as Amazon is, I will say that the books I’ve gotten through Audible are all still there and I can listen to them whenever I want even though I don’t have a subscription or anything anymore.

lemmyvore,

OP hasn’t purchased any book. They’re on a plan that lets them listen to any book for free, except it’s time-limited.

Cinner,

I purchased 3/5 books of the series. The 2 free books add up to 13 hours.

iheartneopets,

I’ve been enjoying LibroFM instead of Audible. Same subscription/credits per month model, but a portion goes to support a local bookstore of your choice. Feels way better to do that than give any extra money to Amazon.

fckreddit,

Wait for a while and Amazon will go down the same route.

w3dd1e,

Audible replaced a version of a book my boyfriend bought with a completely different version of the same book. I mean a different narrator and everything. He had purchased the book a few years earlier but he didn’t manage to get a refund from them.

Stupidmanager,

The Martian by Andy weir was my first experience of this. They re-recorded it with will wheaton and I “lost” my original with RC Bray. Though I will admit my version was part of the plus catalog, I still didn’t get a choice.

w3dd1e,

Why would they think this is okay?

LemmysMum,

Why wouldn’t they, it’s not like anyone is making them act differently.

Localhorst86,

I bought a few books off audible, and while I can still access them even without a subscription, I still have them converted to mp3 on my NAS, in case I ever lose access to audible for some reason.

elvith,

Have you found a way to split those mp3s into several files by chapter etc.? All converters that I have tried so far just yield a single, several hours long mp3…

abbadon420,

I always used SmartAudiobookPlayer (android). It saves your progress nicely. Never felt the need for chapters

elvith,

I use Voice audiobook player, that can do that, too. But when I switch devices, … it’s easier to pick up where I left, if it’s at least separated by chapters (or as some MP3 CDs do every 3-5 minutes a new track).

Also I do sometimes buy mp3 audiobooks for a blind friend who prefers to listen to them on a CD player (buttons can be felt and its easier to use than a touch screen). But a single, several hours long mp3 is bad in this scenario. And as i didnt find a tool to split them easily, Audible exclusives were out of the question…

Localhorst86,

github.com/audiamus/AaxAudioConverter

This should be able to split them by chapter.

elvith,

Thanks, I’ll try it

Neato,
@Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

You bought the audiobooks on Spotify, and then they limited your listening time? What the fuck? Do you have a subscription? DIdn’t even know they sold audiobooks; just thought they had some free ones.

jonne,

Yeah, it’s weird, I thought they were just included with premium, no idea there was a listening limit.

Cinner,

Exactly. I pay for Spotify premium, I purchased 3/5 books in this series, and maybe it’s because 2 of the books were free with premium (incl this last book) that it’s time limiting me. But if that’s the case it’s also counting time listened during my paid-for eBooks. Absolutely crazy to me.

fhein,

So it’s supposed to be 15 hours/month included with your premium subscription? Since I’m not familiar with how Spotify audio books work, I thought you meant that you had a free account and was allowed to listen 15 hours to books that would be included/unlimited with a premium subscription. Contact support if it ate through your monthly credits faster that it should. If you’re a paying customer supports are usually quite helpful.

ninjan,

That doesn’t sound right, I’m betting it’s a bug due to some in the series being bought and some on the time limit deal. Reach out to support.

Empricorn,

If this isn’t an unintended glitch that’s horse shit. I would cancel my account and tell them why.

NightAuthor,

2 ebooks could easily be >15hours. OP sounds like a bullshitter to me. I don’t see how they could come to the conclusion that “its also counting time listened during my paid-for ebooks”. They could provide more info, but they arent. I think they just got mad that they couldnt finish the last 20 minutes of the book (understandably) and decided to flame spotify

Cinner,

See: lemmy.world/comment/7069535

Fades,

What the fuck lmao

Why does anyone use shitify

verysoft,

Convenient, easy to use, available everywhere.

Hiro8811,

YouTube music clients?

HerbalGamer,
@HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works avatar

Needs constant internet connection

Hiro8811,

Innertune can download music

princessnorah,
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Cool, let me know when youtube music starts using lossless audio.

Hiro8811,

Does Shittify ?

damienallbran,

They don’t, there were and potentially still are plans to add the ability to listen at CD quality, but it’s been almost 3 years since the announcement so I highly doubt it’s coming anymore. It also would’ve been 20 USD, at that price I would rather use Spotify premium for it’s playlist features and Qobuz for it’s fidelity for that price.

princessnorah,
@princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Apparently not, but Apple Music & Tidal do.

sounddrill,

I love innertune

Hiro8811,

Me too but cache takes allot of space, if it gets over 5gb the app gets laggy and buggy

BigDanishGuy,

I’d maybe try youtube music, if google didn’t force it down my throat. But when I can’t uninstall it without rooting my phone. Or when I’ve got Spotify already setup, and then have to specify that I want to use it on my home devices. That’s just annoying.

Me: ok google! Bedroom lamps color red, bedroom lamps intensity 30% and play Diana Krall the look of love on the bedroom speakers

Google: Playing The Look of Love by Diana Krall from youtube music, but first listen to these ads before you get your freak on

HerbalGamer,
@HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’ve got a cracked version of some dodgy russian app store

lemmyvore,

How is it shitty in this case? That’s literally what OP bought, the right to listen to any book in Spotify’s catalog for free, for a certain number of hours. If they wanted to listen to a specific book unlimited they should have purchased that book directly.

WallEx,

Because thats what “buying” means, right.

lemmyvore,

They haven’t bought anything though. Or rather, they got exactly what they paid for, listening time.

I’m pretty sure this is a concept OP must’ve seen before, they can’t be that clueless. If you borrow a book from the library you don’t own it, and you have to be done with it by the time it’s due.

At this point I’m not sure if they’re just new to audiobooks or if they’re misrepresenting Spotify’s time-limited plans on purpose.

WallEx,

They baught 3 audiobooks and premium … But sure, shill for spotify.

lemmyvore,

They bought one book, the others were free with time limit.

If Spotify misrepresented the free books or was unclear about what they represent then by all means, they should be called out. But it’s a bit different from what OP has complained about.

WallEx,

Buying premium doesnt factor in for you at all?

Jako301,

Premium is pretty much only for music, the audio book part is more like a free demo. Including them in the normal premium sub is unsustainable.

WallEx,

I geht the first part, but how would that be unsustainable? The cost of streaming audio is next to nothing compared to almost any other media, yet it costs the same or more then netflix, yt premium and the likes

Jako301,

This isn’t about server costs or infrastructure, but rather about licensing rights and artist payments.

Spotify pays 70% of its revenue to artists and despite that most of them are still severely underpaid compared to their listening times. They could pay artists 5-10% more I’d they give up all profit they make, but that’s about it. You already pay artists less than 1ct per song, if that’s still too much or not is for you to decide.

Youtube Premium works cause they pay creators even less while showering every non-premium watcher with ads every 5 minutes.

Netflix has an entirely different business model. They only pay an initial license fee for a finished series. The artists/studio already got paid, the price negotiations is purely between Netflix and a few big publishers. Due to that they can calculate if a series will bring in a profit and only then decide to buy the license for a period of time. Due to that their offer, while it may seem large, is just a tiny fraction compared to Spotify or YouTube.

Now to Spotifys books. I’m not sure what their exact business model is, but either they buy the license for the books or they allow others to sell their books directly on their platform. Whatever it is, its a huge increase in costs for them. Either Spotify has the big upfront license cost that they try to get back by gaining new customers or premium allows you to “rent” a book which means Spotify still has to pay the creator even if you didn’t pay them anything.

Taking the extra money from the already existing premium subscription won’t work. Artists are already underpaid, reducing that even further will lead to them leaving Spotify.

Thorny_Insight, (edited )

Why does anyone use shitify

Virtually every single song in the world in your pocket for a little over 10 euros a month doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me. Then again why does anyone use spotify for anything other than listening to music, there your guess is as good as mine.

Hupf,

Some currently trending pop music, you say?

Damage,

No, there’s lots of niche artists on Spotify, as well as old stuff

Thorny_Insight,

Oh, my apologies for being a mere mortal with a taste for mainstream mediocrity. Clearly, my lack of access to the obscure, avant-garde, underground artists you champion is a tragic oversight. I’ll just be over here enjoying my basic playlist, blissfully unaware of the elevated musical tastes reserved for the chosen few like yourself. Carry on enlightening us, oh connoisseur of the esoteric.

LiveLM,

Wake up babe, new Lemmy copypasta just dropped

NightAuthor,

I saw some avant garde shit the other day, and there it was on spotify. Everyone is on spotify

Honestly, like… who isn’t on spotify? I think Metallica was holding out, but there on there now, and looks like Garth Brooks is also holding out. No one else I’ve ever looked up, including very small artists, were not on spotify.

Mo5560,

I hate Spotify (I have to preface with this sentence)

But plenty of artists these days don’t bother releasing CDs and MP3s and you can legitimately only stream their songs.

I know small artists who were unable to send me the files of their own songs when I asked them. They just sent me a YouTube link and told me to listen there.

navi,
@navi@lemmy.tespia.org avatar

Readarr (works for audiobooks and ebooks, just run two instances) and MyAnonaMouse or ABTorrents, plus your favorite front end (mine is Plex + Prologue).

Snapz,

Keep embracing digital only, assholes… This is what you’re signing up for.

Cinner,

I don’t have time to sit down and read books. I have the disease of modernity. Will you read to me when I call?

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