Just to add some anecdotal pain... I recently bought my first audio book from Audible. I didn't realise it was a proprietary DRM'd format which has no sensible playback on Linux. So rather than spend time hacking together something to rip it, I ended up torrent'ing an mp3 of the book I'd just bought.
It's entirely put me off buying anything else from Audible :-/
Same here. I know they have DRM but it says it plays on "all devices". It actually includes an impressive number of mp3 players, but a notable omission turned out to be Linux.
Then I discovered ffmpeg can decode the files and turned back to my girlfriend who has wanted to share an audible account for a while now.
... which is when I discovered there isn't just Audible, there's Audible US ($15=14eur), Audible UK (8 pounds=9.50eur), Audible DE (10 euros) and others, all of which have different offerings of course. The German one has English stuff, but less. The English ones obviously have hardly any German audio books. My girlfriend is German but we speak English to each other and most stuff we'd read is originally American. Which do we get now, US, UK or DE?
Can't we "just have audio books"? And as m4b/mp3 please, we both want to load it into Smart Audio Book Player which has some features on Android that Audible's player doesn't. Wasn't the whole point of getting Audible to get access to audio books without having to buy and rip each individually?
What a mess.
Oh and for those who are considering Audible without planning on converting them into mp3s, note that the Android app wants to:
- read accounts from the device
- read your contacts
- record audio
- see your phone number
- view WiFi connections
- view network connections
- prevent the device from sleeping (=battery killer and unnecessary for uninterrupted playback with screen off)
I've also found audio books on Audible that they won't sell me because I live in the wrong region (US). I wanted to give them money for a product they carry, but they can't/won't accept it.
lucb1e|9 years ago
Then I discovered ffmpeg can decode the files and turned back to my girlfriend who has wanted to share an audible account for a while now.
... which is when I discovered there isn't just Audible, there's Audible US ($15=14eur), Audible UK (8 pounds=9.50eur), Audible DE (10 euros) and others, all of which have different offerings of course. The German one has English stuff, but less. The English ones obviously have hardly any German audio books. My girlfriend is German but we speak English to each other and most stuff we'd read is originally American. Which do we get now, US, UK or DE?
Can't we "just have audio books"? And as m4b/mp3 please, we both want to load it into Smart Audio Book Player which has some features on Android that Audible's player doesn't. Wasn't the whole point of getting Audible to get access to audio books without having to buy and rip each individually?
What a mess.
Oh and for those who are considering Audible without planning on converting them into mp3s, note that the Android app wants to:
- read accounts from the device
- read your contacts
- record audio
- see your phone number
- view WiFi connections
- view network connections
- prevent the device from sleeping (=battery killer and unnecessary for uninterrupted playback with screen off)
... I just want to listen to audio books.
cpeterso|9 years ago