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:
Second book I listened to for free:
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.
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.
My library closed recently because of structural issues with the building. I finally made up my mind and drove over to get a card. What a bummer.
And what’s the best Android eBook reader
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. :)
Relevant Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU
Fuck Spotify I would demand a refund then do a chargeback if they refuse. This is fucked.
You can only do so many chargebacks before you’re banned from using that payment network, which considering it’s Spotify they likely use one of the largest payment networks. I save chargebacks for when I got royally fscked, not just irritated inconvenience.
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
I already use ReadEra for all my documents needs. Does it save progress well with audiobooks?
I believe he’s using it for ebooks, not audiobooks. I don’t think it’s playing audio.
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
That’s my fault, I messed up and said ebook a few times while meaning audiobooks.
+1 from me for ReadEra as well, great app.
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.
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=Truetoggle 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.This is exactly what I was looking for!
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
You my friend, are a fucking rockstar
Tbh as a quick fix your local library almost certainly has this audio book. Finish your book then you can look into piracy.
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)
You reminded me I do have major regional library card access, if they don’t expire after a couple years.
Pretty sure they don’t. If they do though it’s just a simple matter of showing them your ID.
Sadly, that’s the case less and less these days. Distributors are forcing libraries to use digital resources and gouging them on prices.
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.
100%
The loaning models are designed to punish libraries.
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
More often Hoopla than Libby for me in the SF Bay Area!
Don’t look for/notice the physical CDs, even filter them out.
https://archive.org/details/hhgttg-ab/
Read by Stephen Fry, no less.
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.
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.
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.
You should give the Douglas Adams narrated ones a try.
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.
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.
Yeah, it’s weird, I thought they were just included with premium, no idea there was a listening limit.
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.
If this isn’t an unintended glitch that’s horse shit. I would cancel my account and tell them why.
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
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.
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.
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
Enshitification!
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
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.
settings > lists
easiest is to use the lidarr script with deemix, it automatically downloads everything.
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
So it uses torrents and not Spotify to download? That’s a downer.
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.
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.
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…
https://github.com/audiamus/AaxAudioConverter
This should be able to split them by chapter.
Thanks, I’ll try it
I always used SmartAudiobookPlayer (android). It saves your progress nicely. Never felt the need for chapters
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…
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.
Wait for a while and Amazon will go down the same route.
Always backup your audiobooks by downloading and stripping out the DRM. I personally use Libation, but there’s alternatives out there.
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.
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.
I purchased 3/5 books of the series. The 2 free books add up to 13 hours.
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.
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.
Why would they think this is okay?
Why wouldn’t they, it’s not like anyone is making them act differently.
Readarr (works for audiobooks and ebooks, just run two instances) and MyAnonaMouse or ABTorrents, plus your favorite front end (mine is Plex + Prologue).
