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Audiobooks on Spotify

timetoplayfair.com

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Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#101

Post by fleddr »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #23

No other company do I hate and love so much. I love their discovery algorithms and find new music through them so often. I look forward to my new Discover Weekly every Monday. But in every other way they drive me crazy. The UI is terrible and basic but I've learned to live with it. What I absolutely can't stand is inserting podcasts and audio books into the app with no option to opt-out. I get that they want to put t…

The funny thing is that they have many teams each doing a tiny part of the app's UI, and proudly advertise this model as a best practice:

https://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SpotifyScal...

Baffling how you can have so many engineers working on a music player, and it ends up worse than Winamp or Mediaplayer from 25 years ago.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#103

Post by dmitriid »

jjice wrote: post #39

As someone who uses Spotify every day, I hate it. I hate their expanding markets while constantly making the app more bloated, slow, and less intuitive. Really, you're going to fill my recommended page with podcasts you've paid a ton of money for exclusivity instead of showing me recommended music that's relevant to me, like they used to? Audiobooks aren't going to make my music experience any better either. Can't wa…

> for them to take away lyrics _again_

Disclaimer: I work at Spotify, but I can't speak directly for the teams handling this.

So. Lyrics, and any text that accompanies audio in general (for example, if you try to show audiobook text while it's playing, or audio transcript of a podcast, or...) is a legal minefield.

So, if some text that accompanies audio disappears... it's likely for legal/licensing reasons, not because devs are incompetent.

That said, as an incompetent dev myself, features may disappear due to incompetence, too :)

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#104

Post by kbenson »

agentwiggles wrote: post #72
JadoJodo wrote: post #2

Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas (e.g., Podcasts, TV, Audiobooks, etc.)? I'm honestly kinda tired of all of these services trying to gobble up any slightly related industry. I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard. I don't want to get a subscription co…

Yes, as far as I concerned Spotify was basically perfect in like 2012, and most all of the features added (and _REMOVED_) since then have made the app experience worse. I want to listen to music. That's it. Anything that gets in the way of me doing this is a net bad afaic. I'm still particularly offended by their near deprecation of support for local files. When I first got into Spotify the seamless integration with…

Honestly, I think the perfect music app that never existed is Pandora with the ability to play specific songs. I always found Pandora to a have a much better recommendation system and was actually happier and didn't play specific songs, just stations.

The only thing that made me switch was the Spotify family plan and multiple children asking for it. I've been unhappy with it for years, but can't bring myself to pay for two separate music subscription services, and also can't bring myself to listen to adds.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#105

Post by fleddr »

sdfhbdf wrote: post #69

Quoting from the page: > TLDR: Apple rules mandate a cumbersome Audiobooks purchasing process This is very much a lie. Apple’s way is the easy way - use IAP. And it seems that like with facebook [1] they’re trying to apply the rules evenly to everybody. Spotify religiously denies using Apple’s In App Payments. The attempt to send emails on how to purchase audiobooks is their sneaky way of bypassing the rules. They no…

Your argument is "they are the rules".

I think the point is that the rules are anti-competitive, user-hostile, extractive.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#106

Post by Maxburn »

soneil wrote: post #94
CharlesW wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does a podcast need to have a rss feed? Canonically, yes. RSS is how podcasts are distributed, and why any podcast app can play any podcast. However, Spotify marketing has bastardized words like "podcast" and "podcasting" by using them to refer to their closed, proprietary platform. That strategy is working brilliantly, and so the future of podcasting is probably proprietary platforms on one side, and bullshit "2.0…

It's pretty much embrace, extend .. They're benefiting from the open ecosystem whilst simultaneously damaging it.

Agree with the first part, but how are they damaging it? Everything they are building is open far as I know.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#107

Post by Elidrake42 »

eduction wrote: post #96
ctoth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with HTTP basic auth for this use case? https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss In what way does this "pollute" or "pervert" the open standard? Apple and Spotify are companies, not people, this is not high school, Apple is not "bully"ing Spotify, they have a business relationship. In general your comment is loaded with emotional language that seems to muddle the issue rather than cla…

I didn't consider HTTP basic auth as part of the open ecosystem because it's not, as far as I know, widely supported by clients. Is it? Maybe my assumption was wrong. But it's also not part of the original "open" podcast vision because it is closed by definition, on an access level, and opens the door to tracking. Wouldn't most users in the open ecosystem be confused by an auth prompt? Wouldn't it be better for the o…

As someone with a few Patreon feeds, yes it is widely supported, and the few that don't support it do support URL parameters so a token works fine as well.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#108

Post by pwinnski »

eduction wrote: post #88
CharlesW wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't care about the open nature of podcasts and they want to lure people in then put a wall up around them. This is key. "Podcasts" and "podcasting" were created to refer to an open medium, but Spotify's intentional adoption and perversion of those words to refer to their proprietary platform has worked brilliantly. We're further down the embrace/extend/extinguish path than most people realize.

Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle? And if you support paywalled podcasts, what, in your mind, would be the correct way for Spotify to implement them? (I'm genuinely curious your answer, but to lay my cards and biases on the table: I prefer paid podcasts to the ad supported ones; I'm tired of hearing all the Casper and Squarespace ads woven into the content.…

As ctoth said in cousin comment, HTTP Basic Auth seems to work well for content like that:

https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss

It's open, no proprietary client required.

I, for one, am not totally against the idea of paid-subscription-only podcasts, though I hope they don't completely push out free podcasts.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#109

Post by waboremo »

r2222 wrote: post #91

Yeah the App Store rules suck and that’s all on Apple, but I find it a bit silly for Spotify to repeatedly act surprised about them. It’s the same cycle: Spotify wants go around App Store rules → Apple says no → Spotify fires up the timetoplayfair dot com with slightly tweaked text to fit whatever issue they have this time.

How else are they going to challenge the status quo? I'm confused by people acting shocked and appalled every time any other company brings up issues with the status quo.

Spotify wants to get into Audiobooks, Apple won't let them, Spotify wants to make a social ruckus so people are aware of who to blame and to demand change.

Before you consider the idea they should just quietly try to push regulation, consider without insane amounts of capital to go against the likes of Apple who will always have more, you need the public on your side. It does have an impact on regulation.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#110

Post by waboremo »

nerdjon wrote: post #100
fleddr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine if you prefer that, but this is no reason for Apple to enforce it as the only allowed option.

If apple opens the floodgates allowing these purchases outside of this option, why would a company give apple's option to consumers? Apple enforcing it is the only reason as a consumer I don't have to deal with park patterns for many of the apps I use. Which is a good thing for consumers

You mean Apple would have to be competitive regarding their own services for once? Actually have it make financial sense and provide a seamless experience for companies so they're encouraged to use it rather than forced? No... that can't be a good thing for consumers.
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