Audiblegate • Hacker News Board

Re: Audiblegate

#231

Post by toqy » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 12:59 PM UTC

cassiogo wrote: post #203

conor_f wrote: post #197

Can everyone please just stop using Amazon products already? I'm sick of hearing people complain about them and still say "but they're too convenient" or "I've no other option!". You do. Stop using Amazon and related products. Tell everyone you can to stop using Amazon and related products.

Do you have any audible alternatives to suggest?

I don’t have an answer for a general audible competitor because I too use audible. However I do purchase directly from one studio that I’m a fan of, Soundbooth Theater. There may be other groups with a similar set up, but I’m not aware of any (nor have I looked though)

Re: Audiblegate

#232

Post by worldmerge » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

What was the audio book market like back in the cassette days? My gramma used to listen to books on tape all the time mostly through the library.

Re: Audiblegate

#233

Post by mrleinad » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

reddog wrote: post #227

He lost me at the start by complaining about Audibles listener friendly return policy. How is the producer "shouldering the cost" when I return their crappy, overwritten, poorly narrated audible book for credit?

Not sure what the limits are for returning content, but I'd set some if they haven't already. You shouldn't be able to return the content if you listened on its entirety, for example.

Re: Audiblegate

#234

Post by LeonB » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #212

LeonB wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Audible's network effects can only be dislodged by people not listing their books on Audible at all; so this shouldn't have much of an effect. This isn’t quite right and misses most of what’s going on. Since a book that’s exclusive to A can’t appear on B - B can never get any network effects and thus can’t compete with A. And if B did begin to get any network effects - through an innovative technique ( Eg when book…

> Since a book that’s exclusive to A can’t appear on B - B can never get any network effects and thus can’t compete with A. Indeed, and it should probably be illegal for a company with a monopoly to buy exclusivity as Amazon is doing. But even if the Justice Department took interest and Audible switched to (say) 35% across the board, that wouldn't by itself be enough to dislodge Audible's network effects. That's why…

Ok I think we’re agreement on some fundamentals here about market manipulation and monopolies etc.

Regarding your idea of a scheme to sneak up on and out-fox the market leader… by simply enacting a secret conspiracy amongst a quorum of suppliers:

I do love and admire the idea, I think it’s good stuff and could for example be an interesting movie.

(Actually- one with a similar plot was filmed in my home town when I was a child- some minor prospectors set up an arbitrage situation that turned a monopolistic evil gem dealer against himself… great stuff, and the mayor of my home town got a cameo in one scene).

Bit in reality - outside of fiction - as an actual serious method for unseating a monopoly, I don’t think the shot is even on the board. I don’t know enough laws to see which ones it would break, but I expect there are dozens. But without pondering legalities, fundamentally I see it failing because the conspiracy, among competing suppliers, is effectively a non-iterated prisoners dilemma. It’s better for any semi popular author/publisher to rat on the conspirators and secure a higher exclusive deal from A, than to be online with the B group.

But the first problem is that to fulfill the claim that the existence of such a remote possibility demonstrates that there is “not much of moat” is where I think it really falls down. If you have a technique for achieving a coup like this without getting out the wallet, then please by all means prove me wrong and simply step forward and achieve this scheme. Schemes that have the predicate “If only and not until everyone agrees to do “X” then it would benefit us all” - is generally not sufficient all by itself to bring about the agreement. It takes capital and lots of it.

Re: Audiblegate

#235

Post by germanier » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

Dave3of5 wrote: post #175

duped wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this not defined in a spec document and checked in a unit test? Everywhere I've worked where there were defined formulae (or formulae to be defined) this kind of thing was meticulously checked for correctness. No one should have shipped the service without knowing if the calculations were correct!

> Why was this not defined in a spec document and checked in a unit test? Most companies now-a-days don't write spec up front. That's called Big Design up Front (BDUF) and it was seen in this industry that this was prone to failure which could cause the whole project to fail. That's because it's impossible to know everything up front and often during the project the requirements will change as the stakeholders learn…

In cases like this, the spec already exists though: in form of binding contracts. Lawyers already took that matter into their hand and created that spec. Customers agreed to it. Not translating them into technical requirements early in the process is usually followed with a world of pain.

Re: Audiblegate

#236

Post by lozenge » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

aloer wrote: post #199

iqanq wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can totally see that happening. Who develops systems with short term VAT changes in mind? I suppose it's the same codebase as any other country's amazon, and there's a different VAT rate in every country.

I looked this up just now and apparently Amazons case is more complicated due to things like sold by Amazon (16%) vs third party sellers (they got to choose if they pass it down to the customer or not). It was an economy stimulus after all. And apparently fixed book prices (printed on the back) were up to every single publisher to decide about Then you also have different VAT rules depending on the product category.…

Amazon sold all e books from Luxembourg to UK customers, charging them 3% VAT. When calculating royalties for publishers though, their contracts stipulated the 20% VAT rate would be used to reduce royalties. According to The Guardian, some received just 10% of the purchase price, similar to what Audible(also Amazon owned) is being accused of. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/21/amazon-fo...

Uber also sold UK journeys to UK customers but put the fare calculation taximeter in a server in another country to avoid the 20% VAT. I believe they actually won that case as in the EU, VAT is calculated by the seller using their country's laws regardless of the buyer's country's VAT rates and laws.

Re: Audiblegate

#237

Post by Rd6n6 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

I’ve used downpour for years and it’s a great service. Drm free downloads as well if you don’t want to use their app and a massive selection

Re: Audiblegate

#238

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

banku_brougham wrote: post #83

lotophage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of these kinds of errors is that when the error favors Amazon (or whatever company), it's "keep the lights on" mode. If it's the company losing money then alarm bells ring, and it's "all hands on deck" to fix the issue.

OP clarified the opposite here. As former amazon retail I can confirm we commonly lost money to vendors, sellers, and customers. Funny example was prime day promo fat fingered, with several expensive lenses shipped for $99.

Amazon has a worked hard to develop a reputation of being pro-consumer. And yes they will eat consumer facing errors. I have not heard the same reputation made about vendors, and in fact I've heard quite a few horror story rumors about how they treat vendors. And these complaints (vague as they are) seem to focus on Amazon passing the cost of their customer obsession to their vendors.

But yes, I expect if Amazon accidentally sold me an item for 1% of its actual value due to a typo they will honor it. I expect if they send me the wrong item they'll make it right. As a consumer, I'm not worried about them fixing any errors in their favor and ignoring any errors in my favor.

I just don't expect them to treat their vendors the same way.

Re: Audiblegate

#239

Post by ohyoutravel » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

trymas wrote: post #136

.. and twitter shafts their users, by not allowing to read the thread for people who do not have a twitter account. > See what’s happening > Join Twitter to get the full story with all the live commentary.

Flippantly, it doesn’t sound like they’re shafting their users by disallowing people who are not their users from reading their threads.

Re: Audiblegate

#240

Post by prepend » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #177

pas wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. Amazon is a marketplace, it gets a cut. Since the sale is void, the seller gets 0, Amazon gets some percent of that, which is ... 0. what the hell. how else could it be? if Amazon is billing sellers for "transaction" costs (or presence on platform cost), that's one thing, but that should be a fixed dollar amount. even using the term "cost" makes no sense, because it's not a cost, it's "would have been revenue", a…

Yeah I genuienly think that the author expects Amazon to just eat the cost of returned books. Looking at their other arguments, I guess it's simply because "they can afford it". And while that's true, I don't see any reason why it should work this way - even actual real life bookstores return unsold books to publisher and the publisher has to eat that cost.

It’s possible that author is bad at basic arithmetic and doesn’t understand that 40% of $0 is $0.

It’s interesting to me how many people lack basic financial critical thinking skills and even something super basic like profit isn’t intuitive to all (but it should). So if I see a $5 income one month and a $-1 income next month because the two people returned their book, I get angry instead of trying to understand why.

In the old paper publishing world it took a long time for this accounting so it wasn’t as easy to see the returns. I remember a friend who worked at a bookstore and they would tear the cover off books and send the cover back as a return. The return would be credited against the store account and not count towards author royalties.