A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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TLDR: Audiobookshelf
Been selfhosting it for a few years. Audible is an interesting comparison and I agree with the author that ABS is superior. But it's not without its issues and challenges. Any good podcast app has vastly superior UX. That said, I'm a hoarder and I just have to store every podcast I subscribe to for some reason.
Shoutout to Libation, that allows you to download and deDRM your Audible library.
Oooooo, but there be dragons.
Documentation? Yer lookin' at it This is a single-developer personal passion project. Support, response, updates, enhancements, bug fixes etc are as my free time allows I have a full-time job, a life, and a finite attention span. Therefore a lot of time can potentially go by with no improvements of any kind
It's good they put it up front though. There can be a lot of entitlement with oss users sometimes and setting expectations can help alleviate that.
You don't really need much documentation. You set it up on windows once, which is pretty intuitive and then you copy the config to your server and run it headless. It pulls your library in fixed intervals. I haven't touched it once in the year it is running now
Actually good for the developer. He is doing it out of his passion and faith in OSS. What more should we want of him? The dude is already a hero.
In addition to self-hosting, I'll throw out a few other alternatives:
Free:
Paid:
DRM-free is important IMO because otherwise you're at the mercy of the platform and if the company ever changes its Terms of Use or wipes your account, you lose your purchases. Amazon have remotely deleted books from users' libraries in the past or replaced them with modified copies (e.g. Roald Dahl books). Kindle announced last month they won't let you download your eBooks via USB so it's possible Audible could see changes for the worse in the future as well.
I always mention whenever I see libro.fm brought up: if you don't have a local store you want to support for whatever reasons, Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina is a fantastic refuge for the local queer community, it's a worker cooperative, and they're struggling to survive. Please consider them if there isn't another local place in your own community. With the big book stores and then Amazon, a lot of communities don't have a physical local shop anymore, so if someone has a plug for their local, I think it's worth making on these kinds of threads.
Reminder that "self hosting" media is an extra step, you can do the same with "saving media locally and playing it"
But how will I bring up my NAS in conversations at parties?
The author actually explains that his original solution was just saving them locally on his phone and playing them from there, but that was too much legwork for his wife to want to switch from a cloud service like Audible. So the whole self hosting part is to become “Audible” for his wife lol.
Yes, I am aware of where this is posted and am prepared for my inevitable crucifixion as a result of this observation. But, like... is this really a problem that requires a self hosting solution? That seems like quite the overcomplication to me unless you absolutely require access to your entire selection on multiple devices that will have 24/7 network connections for some reason. I imagine most people actually don't. And if you do, a simple file share is probably a less convoluted solution, and surely already exists on the server you already have.
MP3's take up negligible amounts of storage space on modern devices and can be played on anything, and can be easily taken with you anywhere including out of network range.
I guess teaching people how to drag-and-drop audio files onto their phone and open them with VLC would be a much shorter article.
(Ed: Punctuation.)
Yeeeah, gonna have to disagree with that. Having dead simple access to your library on any device is amazing. ABS syncs your listening position between devices, has offline downloading, supports rich metadata, collections, customized sleep timers, and quite a bit more.
I love Audiobookshelf, my main complaint is the Android app crashes when killed by Android (so when I try to open it I get a message about it crashing and then have to reopen it). That might just be a me thing.
I used the tool Libation to download my Audible books. There was a Firefox extension to download audiobooks from Libby but it's no longer working because Libby changed something and the dev didn't have time to fight the battle, anyone have a good solution to that?
I love Audiobookshelf, my main complaint is the Android app crashes when killed by Android (so when I try to open it I get a message about it crashing and then have to reopen it). That might just be a me thing.
Hmm, I've been using Audiobookshelf on my Android phone(s) for at least the last year without issues like that. Are you using the F-droid or Play Store version? I'm using F-droid if that matters.
F-Droid. Might be relevant that I'm on GrapheneOS.
My wife likes murders and romance, any suggestions for eBook?