[HN Gopher] Downpour: DRM Free Audiobooks
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Downpour: DRM Free Audiobooks
Author : cheph
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-01-17 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.downpour.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.downpour.com)
| autoditype wrote:
| Are there other apps to use DRM-free audiobooks on, which include
| the ability to bookmark?
| alexktz wrote:
| Booksonic.
| cheph wrote:
| This comes with an app that you can use which is quite nice and
| can do bookmarks and has a sleep timer. I use bookmobile on
| iPhone also, but it is not very good.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| voice. on android. absolute rocker of a simple foss app. try it
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiob...
| SquareWheel wrote:
| +1 for Voice. Has exactly as many features as I want, like
| sleep timer, bookmarks, and a dark mode. There's no ads and
| it doesn't cost a dime.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiob.
| ..
| freedomben wrote:
| With such a horribly generic name (one that is shared by an
| official Google app, and 50 million other apps), I am not
| able to find the app at all.
|
| Do you have a link by chance?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audio
| b...
| freedomben wrote:
| Listen Audiobook on Android is awesome. I've been using it for
| years. I do worry that it might be abandonware at this point,
| but it works very well. I keeps all the metadata (current
| position, bookmarks, etc) in the AudioBooks folder (where you
| store your audiobook files) so it's trivial to back it up, move
| to a new device, or seven set up sync.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| BookPlayer[0] on iOS works well. Copying the files to the app
| needs a Mac though. Or you can use Files.app, but it is much
| slower.
|
| [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bookplayer/id1138219998
| bueno wrote:
| Hi! I'm the developer of Bound, an iPhone audiobook app. My app
| supports DRM free audiobooks with the ability to save your
| place and save individual bookmarks. Please check it out if you
| are interested: https://bound.timbueno.com/
| simongr3dal wrote:
| I am certainly liking it a lot!
| santa_boy wrote:
| Thanks. I'll buy this. I've been frustrated about having to
| use my SSD everytime I want to load and audiobook on my
| iPhone.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Absolutely love Smart Audiobook Player on Android (https://play
| .google.com/store/apps/details?id=ak.alizandro.s...).
| davidro wrote:
| Libro.fm also sells DRM free audiobooks, has a nice app, and will
| work with indie bookstores to be their audiobook provider as well
| as turn over a percentage of sales..
| LetThereBeLight wrote:
| I use Libro.fm and am happy that at least some of my money (
| 15%) is going to my local book store.
| 0j wrote:
| Ysk Google play audiobooks can be downloaded without DRM. audible
| books are protected but are very easy download and convert to mp3
| [deleted]
| jaw wrote:
| I've used this service for a few years and really appreciate it.
| Mostly I use their app, which works perfectly fine, but it's nice
| to be able to download the DRM-free files so I know I'm not
| locked in.
| anderspitman wrote:
| Friendly reminder that Audible DRM is easily crackable if you're
| willing to do a bit of googling.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| That may be, but by using Audible instead of a DRM-free vendor
| you're both supporting a DRM-locked provider and _not_
| supporting a DRM-free one.
|
| My first preference is always to buy digital media from a
| company that'll sell it to me DRM-free, when possible. Vote
| with your wallet, etc.
| superkuh wrote:
| When you use text to speech everything is a free audiobook.
| Unless, of course, the book itself is in a locked down DRM format
| where you can't access the text.
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Can you suggest any high quality, free text to speech software?
| As an avid audiobook consumer, if the book is not available in
| audio, I won't read it, but there are some books that I'd like
| to read anyway.
| superkuh wrote:
| No. I use Festival 1.96 with CMU arctic voices. To most
| people they sound fairly robotic but I've been using them for
| almost 20 years so I like it.
| kuczmama wrote:
| This looks like a very cool service, but there are a few problems
| with DRM music I've been unable to solve, I would love to hear
| suggestions if anyone has this figured out. But for now I haven't
| used anything better than audible.
|
| 1. Syncing audio between devices. (i.e. switch from listening on
| my phone to computer, etc)
|
| 2. Automatically back up the files, so when I switch devices the
| books are still there
|
| 3. A good app that that at minimum has the ability to listen to
| the audiobooks at double speed, but it would be nice if it could
| load the album art for free, and book description.
|
| 4. Also, it's really nice to say "Alexa, ready my audiobook", and
| it continues from where it left off.
| mayneack wrote:
| I've been using plex for this. You can configure a music
| library to store playback position and organize like books with
| tags and then use either Prologue (ios) or Chronicle (android).
| Prologue is a lot more polished, but I get by with Chronicle
| ok.
| severine wrote:
| AudioAnchor is GPL. Some features include:
|
| Additional features include:
|
| - Set bookmarks
|
| - Adjust playback speed
|
| - Export and import listening progress as SQL database
|
| - Sleep timer
|
| - Lock screen media controls (for Android 5.0 Lollipop and
| higher)
|
| Available on F-Droid. I can't vouch for it but seems to tick
| some of the boxes.
|
| Link: https://github.com/flackbash/AudioAnchor
| JeremyNT wrote:
| There's also Voice on f-droid, with similar features. I can
| highly recommend it.
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.ph1b.audiobook/
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I have a $10/yr subscription to Marco Arment's
| https://overcast.fm/ for this purpose. "Smart speed" is a total
| game-changer.
| hybridtupel wrote:
| I could be mistaken but isn't overcast only for podcasts i.e.
| streaming sources. But the questions are about audiobooks. Or
| is there a way to import audio book files into overcast?
| czottmann wrote:
| In 2016, they introduced an upload feature.
| https://marco.org/2016/03/14/overcast25 Haven't used
| Overcast myself in a while but I guess that's still
| available.
| francis-io wrote:
| I personally use syncthing to push audiobooks to my mobile
| device and "smart audio book player" on android to play them at
| double speed. I even sync back up the played location. Being
| able to resume playback on device, I'm not sure, I've not had
| need of that.
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| > I personally use syncthing
|
| > I even sync back up the played location.
|
| That sounds cool, how do you do it?
| cheph wrote:
| The downpour app does all of this. Of course it only works for
| downpour books, but if you get another good app you can
| download the MP3s and use them in there also.
| input_sh wrote:
| "Simple Audiobook Player" on Android is just wonderful.
| Requires one-time purchase for some features I believe, but
| I've been using it for years without a single thing to
| complain about.
|
| It also handles chapters, playback speed is _very_
| adjustable, and a feature I like the most is that it takes
| you back to the beginning of the sentence if you pause
| /resume.
| nickik wrote:
| The only thing I would want for it is to have a desktop
| version and syncing between devices.
| mbirth wrote:
| Sounds like you want a podcast app. Pocket Casts can do all
| these things. (Cloud upload needs a Plus subscription, though.
| But you could also self-host your own RSS feed with your
| files.)
| mayneack wrote:
| I love this app for podcasts, but their file upload has a 1gb
| file limit which is a bit limiting for some books.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > But you could also self-host your own RSS feed with your
| files.
|
| That is a _brilliant_ idea and now I want to do this!
|
| I already have a little PHP script that makes an RSS feed out
| of any txt files it finds in the same folder, it should be
| easy to switch to a podcast feed...
| shmerl wrote:
| That's great, thanks for the reference!
| hybridtupel wrote:
| Cannot comment on the audiobook contents as I am hardly put off
| by the website. It doesn't work on my phone as it is loading tons
| of stuff and on my PC it loads but is very slow, doesn't cache
| anything. Thats a pitty as I really like having DRM free
| audiobooks. Will therefore look into the other site metioned
| already.
| fsflover wrote:
| More DRM-free media: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide.
| cheph wrote:
| Thanks for this, https://www.audiobooksnow.com/ also looks like
| a good option for DRM free audiobooks. I think people should
| definitely vote with their wallets here as there are
| alternatives. I can find almost everything I want on downpour
| (and possibly audiobooksnow) and the monthly fee is lower than
| what I was paying at audible.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The other big one is libro.fm, which I also think has the
| nicest website, for whatever that's worth. There's also
| Google Play, but they always seem to be more expensive.
|
| I've been using a combination of these three sites (libro.fm,
| downpour.com, audiobooksnow.com) for many years now. Although
| I do occasionally need to hop back over to Audible for one of
| their exclusives, but not often.
|
| Quick note about audiobooksnow.com, they do have a small
| number of DRM'd titles. Check for a "Downloadable" icon
| before buying!
| devcriollo wrote:
| Free alternative. http://audiobookbay.nl/audio-
| books/type/computer/
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This really isn't right!
|
| Authors deserve to be paid for their work, just as developers
| do. You have the option to buy most audiobooks without any
| technological restrictions. What more do you want?
| ancymon wrote:
| > What more do you want?
|
| E.g. listen for an hour and then decide if I want to buy it.
| [deleted]
| simongr3dal wrote:
| Audible will let you return audiobooks. They aren't drm-
| free but with ffmpeg and the script to find your activation
| bits that can be removed.
|
| I couldn't get this to work: https://github.com/inAudible-
| NG/audible-activator
|
| But had success using: https://github.com/inAudible-
| NG/tables
| hairofadog wrote:
| What a coincidence to see this here! I decided just this week to
| try to get back into listening to audiobooks, and this morning I
| was sitting here having my usual angst about the Amazon ecosystem
| and looking at the options. I can't help wondering if this is one
| of those things where I think about an old song I haven't heard
| in years and suddenly they're playing everywhere, making me feel
| I somehow manifested it, but the truth is that the reason I
| thought of it in the first place is that they had started playing
| it everywhere because of a wave of zeitgeist. In this case, I
| can't help wondering if something about lockdown or current-
| events burnout is causing folks to want to switch from podcasts
| to longer form media less filled with hot takes, which is sort of
| where I'm at.
|
| Another interesting thing on this topic is that Audible now
| allows signing up within the iOS app, which I don't believe was
| possible before. Im not sure if the reason for that has been
| reported anywhere, but I assume that means one of a couple of
| things: They have struck a deal to reduce Apple's cut (seems
| unlikely), they're taking a loss to try to solidify their
| domination of the market, or maybe some combination of taking a
| loss plus their new business model which involves a lot of cheap
| "Amazon Originals" content. There seems to be a rush right now
| between Spotify and Amazon to become the next Netflix of
| podcasting (which is to say, a closed, subscription-based
| ecosystem of exclusive content). I don't think that's going to be
| a great situation, but I don't get the sense they're super
| interested in my opinion on that.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| In app purchases are most likely a result of the deal that
| Amazon and Apple struck earlier this year[0].
|
| 0: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203294/amazon-prime-
| vide...
| hairofadog wrote:
| Ah. Thanks.
| hpfr wrote:
| Related: LibriVox offers free public domain audiobooks.
| Obviously, for the audiobook to be public domain the book has to
| be public domain.
|
| https://librivox.org
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