Audiblegate • Hacker News Board

Re: Audiblegate

#261

Post by microtherion » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

MaysonL wrote: post #172

Many on HN would say that Apple's 30% cut on App Store sales is perhaps unfair. Is Amazon's 75% or 60% unfair, or is it highway robbery? Not to mention what they actually pay instead of the contractual amount.

I have published neither an app nor an audiobook, but my impression is that Apple both takes a far lower cut of the price and is considerably more transparent in how the advertised price translates to the royalty paid out. And Audible seems to have far more market control than Apple has.

Yet in HN discussions, people seem far more inclined to defend Amazon's practices than Apple's. I wonder whether the reason is that a lot more of them make their living off writing software than off publishing audiobooks (but maybe there is some other factor there that I'm missing).

[Disclosure: Apple employee & shareholder, not involved in store related activities, not speaking for Apple]

Re: Audiblegate

#262

Post by a2800276 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #133

a2800276 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always amazed that people can't see this as greed. If the CEO of a medical equipment company said: "screw all these expensive software engineers, physicists and testers, I have a 14 year old niece who can code up our radiation therapy machine for nickels" no one would be blaming incompetence of devs. I don't see how all the lack of solid requirements, software development process, testing and means of recourse ar…

I just meant to differentiate it from people at Amazon going "Let's cheat the publishers out of their royalty!" Of course that might be what happened, but it would surprise me. If you want to think of not hiring enough people to do the work that's required as greedy - then I think it's fair to call greed as the source of the problem. Another element of this that cuts against "greed" as the motivator in my mind is tha…

"Let's cheat the publishers out of their royalty!"

is greed and:

"Let's save money creating the services we provide, almost certainly at the cost of our customers in order to be more profitable"

is not?

"in my mind is that it isn't like anyone who would implement the details here would give a hoot if Amazon went plus or minus ten million dollars"

in that case I'd argue it's a massive management failure on Amazon to have a bunch of people working for them that do not care about the consequences of their actions. To labor my previous metaphor: somehow the radiation machine manufacturer finds a way to get its employees to care that their products work as intended.

And while I agree it would be morally worse if they were intentionally bilking customers (be it content producers or listeners), sins-of-omission are very real as well. You're right that $10mio are nothing to Amazon, but $10k could easily be the difference between wild success of an independent audio book creator and their financial ruin.

Re: Audiblegate

#263

Post by citiguy » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

This behavior isn't limited to Amazon. In my years of working for IT on Wall Street, I've seen this happen numerous times. Sometimes it's too hard to write the code to ensure the contract is complied with. Other times, the folks who wrote the contract didn't communicate it clearly and/or document it. It's not even limited to American companies. When I worked at a large Swiss bank, they had a similar compliance issue.

Re: Audiblegate

#264

Post by lolinder » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

thereddaikon wrote: post #244

Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.

Yep, and calling it Audiblegate is just symptomatic of the general quality of the thinking that went into the post. It's lazy reasoning cloaked behind the language of internet outrage.

Re: Audiblegate

#265

Post by werber » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

What is the best option for someone who mostly listens to books read by the author and has relatively low brow taste? Recently two of my favorite musical acts, sleater Kinney and Liz phair released audible exclusives that I loved. I hate the idea of artists being screwed over, but, I’m at a loss for where to turn. Audible is a huge part of my life, but I don’t want to support artists being screwed over.

Re: Audiblegate

#266

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

INTPenis wrote: post #176

HotHotLava wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it’s Audible. What choice is there? I mean, at $11 a year it doesn't sound like Audible is a critical part of your income, so why not create a gumroad account and sell directly from the authors and/or narrators website? It sounds like you could even offer a heavily discounted price and still come out ahead. If enough producers come together this way you could even create some producer's co-op that can put up a…

Yeah the funny thing is that AWS, GCP, Azure and so on provide all the infrastructure to cheaply distribute audiobooks on your own. All we need now is for someone to sit down and write an open source tool for it. I'm a dreamer but I see a world where audiobook creators can create an account on a privately hosted instance, sort of like bookwyrm but with payment features, promote their work using ActivityPub in a feder…

It's not just distribution, but also the player. I tried other players in the past and had problems with them. When Audible's just worked and was reliable, I stuck with it. I can't be alone in that thinking.

Perhaps there are better players now, but if you're going to distribute the audio book on your own store, I think you need to be ready to recommend a good player for each OS your customer might be on. And it had better actually be a good player, or people will be upset with you, too.

Re: Audiblegate

#267

Post by delgaudm » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

salamandersauce wrote: post #207

ohgodplsno wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your housemate doesn't re-listen the recorded book, doesn't make edits, doesn't clear up passages, cut and rearrange unwanted silences? He is either wildly underestimating it by only taking the "talk into a microphone" part in consideration, or I feel terribly sorry for anyone listening to his audiobooks.

Does the narrator need to be involved in making edits, re-listen to recorded book, cutting and rearranging unwanted silences? Other than the occasional line redo if something is flubbed or off I don't see how that involves the narrator?

In many cases in the ACX world the narrator does it all. All the production falls to the narrator.

Re: Audiblegate

#268

Post by wccrawford » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

thereddaikon wrote: post #244

Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.

This has bothered me for some time now. Most of these handy portmanteaus don't really bother me, but this one makes no sense on its own and just sounds stupid. Sure, I know what they mean, but I cringe every time.

Re: Audiblegate

#269

Post by hattar » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #256

AitchEmArsey wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Domain-Driven Design > It's not exactly rocket-science either I'd imagine that occasionally "rocket science" is exactly what it is!

This always baffled me. Rocket science is basically F = GMm/d^2 with m changing over time as you burn fuel and also thrust vectoring. Where is the complexity?

Aerodynamics issues likely add a lot of complexity, though I’m sure there are plenty of other factors that make launching a rocket hard.

Re: Audiblegate

#270

Post by lolinder » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

werber wrote: post #265

What is the best option for someone who mostly listens to books read by the author and has relatively low brow taste? Recently two of my favorite musical acts, sleater Kinney and Liz phair released audible exclusives that I loved. I hate the idea of artists being screwed over, but, I’m at a loss for where to turn. Audible is a huge part of my life, but I don’t want to support artists being screwed over.

You're fine to keep using Audible, in that case. This Twitter thread is overblown. Read through the top few comments here and you'll see that what is happening is exactly what the artists sign up for: they get a portion of the net sales of credits, weighted by length/price of the book.

Audible's business model is selling subscriptions. Artists get a share of that revenue, and their share is comparable to that from any other publisher. The Twitter user is trying to exploit internet outrage for their own gain, not reacting against a truly bad deal.