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.
I use soggfy to rip from Spotify and can recommend that. Other than that myanonamouse is the place to be for audiobooka imo
I just love this machine built by Peter Sunde (Pirate Bay. It copies a file to /dev/null and tracks how much it costs the music industry 😂https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/this-season-a-notorious-pirate-gives-the-music-industry-an-expensive-gift/
I didn’t really like readarr, it had a weird workflow and I find books to be different than series (they have longer release frequency, for example) so I’m getting them manually and importing into calibre for metadata. This way I can also check the quality of each epub because I hate finding that the book I’m going to read is badly formatted or has a weird encoding.
I can only help with the last part as I use audible. Have you tried Voice? https://droidify.eu.org/app/?id=de.ph1b.audiobook&repo_address=https://f-droid.org/repo
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiobook
I stopped paying when they started serving adverts in 2020. Why am I paying a subscription fee to be served adverts? Especially during a period where I was only listening to a few hours per week. Fck dat greedy piggies.
And what’s the best Android eBook reader
libraries let you check out audiobooks for free
They even often have them streaming for free. All of my wife’s audiobooks are free streamed via the library and she listens to them every day.
LOL @ spotify on this one. Gunna piss off even the normies.
Soulseek/Nicotine+
Full Explanation:
Spotify introduced Audiobooks to their platform in November 2023:
- Unlimited listening to public domain classics.
- 15 free hours per month of premium audiobooks.
- 10 hour top ups available.
- Can purchase premium audiobooks for unlimited listening.
OP purchased book 1 and can listen to it all they want. They did not purchase book 2 or 3, and also listened to other audiobooks, putting them over the 15 hour limit.
Key Facts:
- Spotify Audiobooks are a new feature with no additional subscription cost.
- OP used all of their free credits for the month.
- OP was never prevented from listening to a book they purchased.
That said, stop paying for audiobooks like a chump and get a library card.
Reading is hard when doing several hour long commutes… Audiobooks also can enhance the book as some are edited to cut out parts which really don’t contribute. A good editor can make or break a book. I do like reading, but there are times where audiobooks not only provide better experience, they are also the most time efficient as can be enjoyed during other tasks.
My library’s website lets you check out audiobooks. Is that not common?
Weird way to say “just torrent the audio book”
Oh man, I did the hard work (it was easy) of reading some rules and answering some questions via irc to get an invite to MAM and wow is that a treasure-trove of ebooks and audiobooks.
dude yes it’s great but remove the name please
Why, are even names flagged in some way? MAM is amazing, but if I have to never talk about it to protect it more, I will.
You do realise this is a pirate community? The way yor comment reads, it seems like you dislike OP wanting free stuff.
I am aware of people doing some mental gymnastics to justify piracy. But IMHO that is about the same difference as a pirate to a privateer. Just acknowledge that you want stuff without paying and hoist that black flag.
All the free audiobooks you want from your library using hoopla and Libby.
I tried this and the waiting list for anything remotely worth a damn was months long. I just went and pirated the thing instead.
Has your experience been different?
I can get almost anything from my library as long as it’s not the brand new hotness. Occasionally there’ll be a book here or a book there that’s got one person waiting in line, but our maximum checkout time is a week. I pull the book down rip the audio from it and free up my hold the same day.
What tools do you use to rip the audio? I’m just wondering so I don’t accidentally do it.
You could go as far as virtual audio cables and audacity. No matter what changes they can’t stop that.
But if your library supports OD, go dig up the old PC app for OD. When you download the book to start listening to it it decrypts it as it throws it onto the drive.
Some books seem to have some weird duplicated audio here and there is a coffee protection method. Like there’s some secret M3U somewhere that skips around when it plays it, but most stuff comes out clean.
If you can’t get it to come out with the app use one of the virtual audio cable style applications wire the output into a line-in for audacity and just rerecord the whole thing compress it down. You lose individual chapters as files I don’t really pay attention to the chapters I’m on I care about the total distance to the book and being able to pick up where I left off. I suppose if you were trying to do some kind of hybrid read and listen back and forth it would be more useful to have the chapter numbers.
Hoopla has better availability but a worse app. Libby can have long wait lists but I just keep a queue going. There’s always a good list of available now audiobooks to keep me going until my holds are available.
I experience that, but you should get more library cards.
The more you use the library the better it is. My partner reads almost a hundred books a year. She’s voracious. She reads them almost exclusively through the library. With Libby you’re able to juggle holds easily so that new books are always coming up when you finish the last one. If it comes back too early you just tell it to wait.
I particularly seem to be into stuff that my community isn’t feverishly trying to rent. That helps haha. Traditional paper books too, I could keep renewing them for a stupid amount of time because they didn’t end up on hold. Found out the limit was 255 renewals until they suddenly dropped it to like 10 max. :(
But sadly all the good nerd stuff like R.A. Salvatore books or Discworld always has queues, yeah.
Fick libby, the company thatade it doesn’t care about its employees
That’s most companies buddy.
Important info here. Definitely not the impression I got from the OP.
Puts pitchfork away
So OP is complaining about being limited by the amount of free books OP can listen to? Sounds fair to me, these things cost money to make, and websites cost money to run.
Sure whatever you say step corp-bro
Ok, thats funny. But for real, what I’m lightly annoyed by is the way they seem to be using the 15 hours of audiobooks as a sort of free-trial to get you to buy more credits, and also how much podcasts and audiobooks are pushed even for those of us who exclusively use spotify for music. On the other hand, if you use the feature, it cost you nothing additional to use up to that 15 hours, or those free books, its strictly a value add.
How is an audiobook different from any other piece of audio?
Licensing costs
Just look how much this little machine is costing the music industry! https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/this-season-a-notorious-pirate-gives-the-music-industry-an-expensive-gift/
Lol, but seriously… licensing costs the license holders nothing… but it does costs spotify something.
See my other comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/7069535
You’re making disingenuous assumptions when you say I listened to other audiobooks. I have only listened to this series. purchased 3, and listened to 2 of the free (premium) books. I did not listen to any other books. There were a couple times it skipped a chapter with an accidental scroll, and I had to scroll back, but I didn’t actually listen so it shouldn’t count.
I wasn’t aware of the 15 hour limit but of course I am now as it’s been pointed out many times in this thread. I didn’t even know they had audiobooks until they started showing up on the opening screen of Spotify. I got hooked listening to the Steven Fry narrated OG book and then went to buy the next 3 and the last book in the series was also included in premium so I listened without buying. Still, 13 hours (which makes up for any skipping) is not 15 hours, so there’s either a bug or they intentionally count unlistened to skipped chapters as being listened to.
I’m getting Libby setup today with my library card.
That’s an awful lot of words for “Spotify is bullshit.”
I mean, seems like this is way better for listening to audiobooks than when they had no audiobooks whatsoever
Thank you for the context.
I have the whole series as DRM-free MP3. Let me know if you want it.
DM sent
Better late than never and I responded! Check your DM. :)
Library Card
Depends on your local library but I have for example unlimited E Books included.
I’m embarrassed that I never thought of this. Sure enough, my library lends both e-books and audiobooks. It’s limited to 2-3 per month, but that’s more than I need anyway
I saw a librarian say on a post that people should borrow from the library anyways, even if they don’t think that they’ll get to it before it’s due, because it means that they can use the higher rates of usage to argue for more funding. Getting something for free and helping the local libraries at the same time? Sounds like a win-win to me.
Libby app.
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
An audiobook, of an ebook, of a book, adaped from a radio play… ok then?
You should try the video game!!
EXAMINE POCKET
Love your local library. The Lemmy app is a good way to access content.
Also pirating… I live in the southern US, where they keep underfunding my library.
You almost certainly meant to say Libby.
