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I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend t
by taeric 3y ago
I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like.
Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod files and other demoscene music sharing was a ton of fun.
Specifically to audible, to complain about their margins without acknowledging that they have built a large part of the market feels dishonest. I remember audio books before audible. Usually ~50 bucks for book. As such, I owned maybe 1. So, congrats, the folks on them could get more of a percent of far far fewer purchases. Getting things for lower cost is exactly why I get more of them. Such that artists have gotten more from me, even with the lower margin to them, from audible than they ever got before. Wanting the same large cut of a smaller sell is entitlement on both ends.
- pixelatedindex 3y agoI actually think Audible is pretty good. I would feel better about buying from them if it wasn’t fully owned by Amazon. Are there any good alternatives out there?
- abawany 3y agoI'm a fan of downpour.com: no-drm downloadable mp3s, no monthly subscription lock, and a good selection.
- howardabrams 3y agoGutenberg has some. Perhaps I need to help by reading the classics out loud... into a microphone... and uploading them.
- wlesieutre 3y agoSpeechify is trying, though the catalog isn't nearly as wide https://speechify.com/audiobooks/ https://speechify.com/audiobooks/
- cobbzilla 3y agotry librivox.org, decent public domain coverage.
- UtopiaPunk 3y agolibro.fm is an option for buying books. You can purchase a subscription or buy individual books. Some of the money goes to support local bookstores, so that's kind of neat. They're also not Amazon, so that's kind of neat, too. I'm a big fan of the Libby app, which you can acccess through your local library. If your library subscribes to the service (and it's likely they do if you live in the USA), then you just need to log in with your library card. https://libbyapp.com https://libbyapp.com There's also LibriVox, which is mostly a volunteer project. As its volunteers, the quality of the reading can vary widely, but you can sometimes find audio versions of older literature here that can't be found anywhere else. It's also free. https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/
- TylerE 3y agoJust because a library subscribes to libby doesn’t mean you nessesarily get it. My local system does, but they went for cheapest plan that only includes children’s books.
- pixelatedindex 3y agoThankfully my library uses Libby - I just wish they let you check out physical books too like how Overdrive used to.
- entropicdrifter 3y agolibro.fm is the website I use for audiobooks. The library is signficantly smaller but it's 100% DRM free, you can support a local bookstore with your purchases [1], and they have a subscription that gives you credits you can spend on audiobooks, very similar to Audible. [1] https://libro.fm/indies https://libro.fm/indies
- layer8 3y agoI use https://audiobookstore.com/ https://audiobookstore.com/.
- CharlesW 3y ago> But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. I'm curious about how old you are. Tech's obsession with DRM (then called "copy protection") started in 1975¹, and IIRC as of the late 70s/early 80s basically all software of note had DRM. ¹ https://archive.is/b8rK9 https://archive.is/b8rK9
- mikewarot 3y agoWe tech people are only obsessed with routing around DRM... it's management that is obsessed with DRM.
- Muromec 3y agoThat's why the "big" qualifier is important.
- maxbond 3y agoIt is vitally important not to conflate technologists with the tech industry and not to confuse a criticism of the industry as a criticism of ourselves personally.
- lesuorac 3y agoWork at a place that made expensive physical objects. Customers calling in because they could use the objects because they plugged the hardware key into a different machine was all the time ... Like the hardware had to be wired to the computer running the software. An extra hardware key that needs to be plugged into the computer as well doesn't do anything!
- 8note 3y agoThis gives me a fun hardware idea: Make hardware keys that have the shape of real keys, and that you have to turn to engage the USB key. The key shape isn't security, just a hint at what needs to plug where. You sell both keys and receptacles that can be put into a metal case or an otter box
- wlesieutre 3y agoAudible reportedly only pays 25% to authors, bumping it up to 40% if they agree to exclusivity on Audible. Which of course a lot of authors do because they need the money, and then no other audiobook marketplace can compete.
- taeric 3y agoRight, but that was my point on the numbers. As a customer that has several hundred audio books due to Audible, yes, I know that the authors get a smaller cut of the sell than they do if I buy the audio book in a store. But their larger cut of my store purchases is effectively 0. Audible has grown the market to numbers that were basically pipe dreams of the past. To ignore that in the calculation is really dishonest. I don't know if they are the best numbers, but https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-sales-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-sales-statistics/ has some break downs. The digital market has clearly seen a shift in the last couple of decades. And it seems safe to say that it has driven a lot of the growth in publishing and other related metrics. My assertion is that publishers used to give higher cuts to the authors because they didn't care about such a small portion of their sales. More, their long term investments in printing made it such that they couldn't scale out audio books nearly as effectively, so they had no incentive to build out that market. Even dumber in this debate, the fact that Audible puts their files in DRM is almost certainly at the demands of the publishers. You can click through most publishers to see they still want to charge 25+ for audio books that you can get for 1 "credit" on Audible. Credits being about 11 bucks, and I get why publishers would want to keep those files restricted to try and discourage people from using Audible.
- wlesieutre 3y agoMy problem isn't just with the royalty rates, it's making the default rate so low and using it as leverage to push authors into exclusivity contracts. Imagine if Apple started telling companies "You have to pay us a 60% cut, unless you agree to not have an Android app in which case we'll do 30% instead." You could argue that Apple is entitled to make that arrangement because they essentially created the mobile app software market, but I have a hard time imagining that people would be OK with it.
- aedocw 3y agoDepending on what you are looking for from an audio book, there are options. If you expect essentially a professionally made radio production of the book (multiple voice actors, effects, etc) then a real audio book is hard to beat. On the other hand if you just want to listen to the book being read, check out https://github.com/aedocw/epub2tts https://github.com/aedocw/epub2tts ... It does not sound as good as a pro human, but it's not far off in my opinion. I've used that to listen to 30+ books that I owned the digital version of.
- taeric 3y agoI actually have a few narrators that I prefer now. I think they get less of a cut than the authors do, but are still doing quite well for themselves, now.
- TylerE 3y agoI’m just glad we’re past the point of 80% of fiction being narrated by Scott Brick, the most boring and monotone narrator ever.
- asdfman123 3y ago> A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere Not the part that controls the market share.
- artichokeheart 3y agoDid you actually read the article linked? There was no mention of margins. I question the motives of your comment. It reads like big tech bootlicking.
- taeric 3y agoI read it. I confess I'm largely remembering previous articles that loved highlighting the amount of margin that Audible demands. For the DRM complaint, I'm mostly sympathetic, but I have a really hard time believing it is not at the insistence of the publishing companies. They literally force library lending to go through similar DRM schemes. And it is largely in their interests to make sure you can't purchase the cheaper Audible version of a book and take it out of their ecosystem. That last point is ultimately my main gripe here. Audible has incentives for you to buy more from them. Which they largely pursue not by locking your current purchases to them, but by offering better prices and funding better books. To try and "stick it to the man" by bitching about DRM schemes is a hell of a non-sequitur that smacks more of virtue signalling than it does actual concerns.
- incongruity 3y agoI find it really hard to deny that platform lock-in is a powerful anti-competitive and anti-consumer force - I think you’re off base in denying its impacts and the merits of addressing it.
- taeric 3y agoI largely agree with this take. But I also largely feel I'm being asked to support, who, exactly? Note that we aren't pushing for removing the DRM. This is largely about someone wanting you to buy from another place. I can almost believe the DRM angle, but publishing houses have shown they are the far larger driver of that than Audible is. This is why libraries have to have a special license to loan out audio books. They are largely looking to force that in ebooks, even.
- belorn 3y agoWhat other previous articles? As for the last point, that one is not about Audible, so... what are we even discussing here? The article last argument, which is after discussing DRM and monopolies where users are captured into a locked market, is that google and apple has a 30% tax. They don't go into any depth over why a general 30% tax in a third-party market is bad in a duopoly situation, presumably because they don't feel it is necessary.
- slowmovintarget 3y agoHow about Brandon Sanderson's criticism of Audible? [1] > If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay the creator 70% on a sale. It’s what Steam pays your average creator for a game sale, it’s what Amazon pays on ebooks, it’s what Apple pays for apps downloaded. (And they’re getting heat for taking as much as they are. Rightly so.) > Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of reference, most brick-and-mortar stores take around 50% on a retail product. Audible pays indie authors less than a bookstore does, when a bookstore has storefronts, sales staff, and warehousing to deal with. > I knew things were bad, which is why I wanted to explore other options with the Kickstarter. But I didn’t know HOW bad. Indeed, if indie authors don’t agree to be exclusive to Audible, they get dropped from 40% to a measly 25%. Buying an audiobook through Audible instead of from another site literally costs the author money. What's worse is if the audio book goes into their subscription service, the author gets paid an even smaller fraction, as it is 25% or 40% of the fractional time on the subscription fee. Amazon built the system to dominate the market, then used the dominant position to bully creators into a teeny tiny fraction of the profits Amazon makes on the work. [1] https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2022/ https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2022...
- taeric 3y agoI covered this in other threads, basically. In truth, I was largely responding to this angle at the outset. DRM feels like a red herring that almost certainly exists due to demands from publishing houses. (I'll have to check to see if you can get any non-DRM files from libraries. My expectation is going to be a big no on that from any library that lends out audio books.) The odd complaint here is that the authors are upset at getting a smaller share of a smaller sell, that is in a much larger sea of sales. They acknowledge that they make more money from audio books sold at audible, even with this cut. This also does a shit job of showing the break down to the performers that are reading the book. If those are paid externally to the 40% that goes to the author, I really don't know how to take the complaints seriously other than greed on the authors that are talking about it.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago