this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024

2 points (100.0% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

54369 readers

604 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others

Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

💰 Please help cover server costs.


Ko-fi	Liberapay

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com

sunbrothersco@lemmy.dbzer0.com

dataprolet@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com

RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Wot The Fsck You Say, Spotify? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Cinner@lemmy.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

top 30 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] elvith@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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...

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I always used SmartAudiobookPlayer (android). It saves your progress nicely. Never felt the need for chapters

[–] elvith@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

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...

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://github.com/audiamus/AaxAudioConverter

This should be able to split them by chapter.

[–] elvith@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

Thanks, I'll try it

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] w3dd1e@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] w3dd1e@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Why would they think this is okay?

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's no too hard. You could do it over a weekend if you're technically inclined like you say.

My tip: set it up on a clean pc (or nas or pi or whatever you're gonna use), don't use your old pc that still has all your files and stuff. I just booted up my old pc, that I hadn't cleaned and got the whole arr suite and plex set up for my local network. It all works, but now that I want to open it up to the outside, I realize that have to first clean my pc. That pretty much means starting over.

[–] TheBiscuitLout@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can you recommend a distro for being a media server? I too have been complacent about my media habits, and the time has come to sort it out.

[–] Mixel@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

Depends on your use case I guess. I personally use unraid for my server which works fine but if you don't want to pay anything and have a good experience choose Ubuntu server or Debian (since they are the most supported and stable) but I have no clue about that either, theoretically you can do it on every distro

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 0 points 9 months ago

https://archive.org/details/hhgttg-ab/

Read by Stephen Fry, no less.

[–] ashley@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

What the fuck lmao

Why does anyone use shitify

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

How is it shitty in this case? That's literally what OP bought, the right to listen to any book in Spotify's catalog for free, for a certain number of hours. If they wanted to listen to a specific book unlimited they should have purchased that book directly.

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Because thats what "buying" means, right.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They haven't bought anything though. Or rather, they got exactly what they paid for, listening time.

I'm pretty sure this is a concept OP must've seen before, they can't be that clueless. If you borrow a book from the library you don't own it, and you have to be done with it by the time it's due.

At this point I'm not sure if they're just new to audiobooks or if they're misrepresenting Spotify's time-limited plans on purpose.

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They baught 3 audiobooks and premium ... But sure, shill for spotify.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They bought one book, the others were free with time limit.

If Spotify misrepresented the free books or was unclear about what they represent then by all means, they should be called out. But it's a bit different from what OP has complained about.

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Buying premium doesnt factor in for you at all?

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Premium is pretty much only for music, the audio book part is more like a free demo. Including them in the normal premium sub is unsustainable.

[–] WallEx@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I geht the first part, but how would that be unsustainable? The cost of streaming audio is next to nothing compared to almost any other media, yet it costs the same or more then netflix, yt premium and the likes

[–] Jako301@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This isn't about server costs or infrastructure, but rather about licensing rights and artist payments.

Spotify pays 70% of its revenue to artists and despite that most of them are still severely underpaid compared to their listening times. They could pay artists 5-10% more I'd they give up all profit they make, but that's about it. You already pay artists less than 1ct per song, if that's still too much or not is for you to decide.

Youtube Premium works cause they pay creators even less while showering every non-premium watcher with ads every 5 minutes.

Netflix has an entirely different business model. They only pay an initial license fee for a finished series. The artists/studio already got paid, the price negotiations is purely between Netflix and a few big publishers. Due to that they can calculate if a series will bring in a profit and only then decide to buy the license for a period of time. Due to that their offer, while it may seem large, is just a tiny fraction compared to Spotify or YouTube.

Now to Spotifys books. I'm not sure what their exact business model is, but either they buy the license for the books or they allow others to sell their books directly on their platform. Whatever it is, its a huge increase in costs for them. Either Spotify has the big upfront license cost that they try to get back by gaining new customers or premium allows you to "rent" a book which means Spotify still has to pay the creator even if you didn't pay them anything.

Taking the extra money from the already existing premium subscription won't work. Artists are already underpaid, reducing that even further will lead to them leaving Spotify.

[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Why does anyone use shitify

Virtually every single song in the world in your pocket for a little over 10 euros a month doesn't seem like a bad deal to me. Then again why does anyone use spotify for anything other than listening to music, there your guess is as good as mine.

[–] Hupf@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some currently trending pop music, you say?

[–] Mo5560@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

I hate Spotify (I have to preface with this sentence)

But plenty of artists these days don't bother releasing CDs and MP3s and you can legitimately only stream their songs.

I know small artists who were unable to send me the files of their own songs when I asked them. They just sent me a YouTube link and told me to listen there.