DRM-Free Audiobook Platform?

Anyone know of any? Or at least a good alternative to Audible, with good discounts and stuff (cuz audiobook are expensive). I’ve completely shut down my Amazon account due to recent events. I really liked the token system that Audible had, but I am freeing myself from all Amazon services.

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i don’t know what region you are from, but in the EU many countries have book stores that also offer audiobooks on their website. Maybe check out your local bookstore.
Even libraries have audiobooks in my hometown. You might need a CD player though :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I have very little experience of this, but I’ve converted old CD audio to MP3, then placed them on my Plex server. Theres an app called plex amp that works quite well on any android/apple device, as well as web browser.

Oh, and there is an audiobook app for FreeNAS/TrueNAS as well, Ryan mentioned it in a video a while back.

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I really like how Amazon’s “credit” system basically just drops the price of audiobooks to an affordable level. It is annoying you have to buy a bunch at a time in a plan/ wait for more “credits.”
I guess audiobooks take money to create and license, but they are chuffing expensive.
And it annoys me to give money to bezo but at the end of the day, audiobooks are good enough to give money to Amazon, but not enough to pay “real” prices for.
For me anyway.

I found Amazon subscription service terrible. In the UK(.co.uk) at least. If you exceed the maximum amounts of tokens they will not give you anymore of them but it will still charge you for the month and once you cancel your service they take all the books and tokens even if you had extra :confused: I’d just do what the others have suggested and setup a little home server for yourself and use any client that you personally like or through the web browser. You can buy audio books in digital download format (I think simplyaudiobooks had that option and a few others) and place them on your home server, access any time on any device

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I’m pretty sure mine does, it’s just so expensive to buy brand new. That’s what I loved about Audible. Basically reduced the price of any audiobook to $15, plus discounts that sometimes help bring the price even lower. But Amazon is a no-go for me now. There is a used bookstore near me that has them, very affordable, but extremely limited selection.

Weird. I never knew about that. But I also kept my credit balance low so I would never have noticed. The only time it was kind of a pain was when they had buy 3 get 1 free or whatever and you can’t have more than 2 credits for that deal, so you have to use some in order to buy more and if there’s nothing you want to buy at that time it’s kind of annoying.

That’s an option, but I’d rather just sideload them onto my phone. Then don’t need to worry about having some sort of internet connection, because some areas I drive through on the way to work will cut out while streaming every time.

That’s what I’m looking for primarily, and then just sideload them onto my phone. I have 128GB internal and a 128GB SD card, so I’m really not worried about space. I don’t want to have to rely on another service where I have to use their app for their proprietary audio formats in order to listen to the audiobooks I’ve purchased.

I’ll check out simplyaudiobooks. Also found LibriVox and Downpour. Still need to look into how they work.

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Oh wait, here’s a list:

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks

Recommendations from the GNU people.


Libro and Downpour both look like they have a membership option similar to Audible. Downpour is a little cheaper. Libro sounds like the purchases you make come from local bookstores (like their website is just a storefront pretty much, but they’re not running the insides), which is a cool idea. Now it’s just up to whichever is more freedom-respecting in how they let me listen to my audiobooks.

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That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

I thought I’d have a look at Plex Amp as well, it does have a download option. You could install Plex on your main machine and do it that way may be, no need for FreeNAS server in that case. Each to their own - only suggesting things I have knowledge of :+1: Might be too much mucking around I guess. More convenient to have a subscription, but like I think you said, means you’re dependant on their service continuing. If you bought the MP3’s and downloaded them, at least they’d stay as your property, so to speak!

Ended up going with Libro.fm.

The subscription is a couple dollars more than Downpour, but it’s cool because you choose a local bookstore and a portion of each purchase goes to that store.

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