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Audiobooks on Spotify

timetoplayfair.com

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Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#151

Post by amerkhalid »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #65
wobbly_bush wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you also willing to pay the extra Apple tax for this convenience instead of expecting the subscription provider to eat those costs?

Depends on the product and the tax. Looks like I'm paying more via IAP for Youtube ($16 vs $12/mo) and Audible ($16 vs $8/mo ???) according to the prices listed on their website. Half of the services out there probably charge you extra just because you don't have to go through their scummy "cancel subscription" website pipeline. They probably lose millions on that along with the fact that I get an iOS notification wh…

Especially when trying a new service, I rather pay slightly higher fee than risk dealing with scummy cancellation process. But I may switch payment method if I decide to keep the service longterm.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#152

Post by syrrim »

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…

The "rules applied evenly to everyone" means everyone but them loses 30% of all sales revenue.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#153

Post by dmix »

threeseed wrote: post #131
waboremo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 withou…

Maybe Spotify should take the lead. Allow third party payment services and music stores in their app. With 0% cut of course.

Spotify is saying the cut should be 0% for Apple?

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#154

Post by r2222 »

waboremo wrote: post #109
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 withou…

Apple would definitely let them to get into audiobooks, Spotify just doesn’t want to give them the cut. As a platform owner Spotify takes a cut from the artists, aren’t they playing the same game as Apple?

If they somehow get regulators to allow 3rd party payments on App Store, that would be a terrible thing for the users. I don’t want to start giving out my credit card number to every random company I want to purchase content from.

The UX issues Apple rules create are legit concerns though, but it just kinda feels they’re used as a veil to get to the bottom line, which is to get around the IAP system. It’s always about the money.

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#155

Post by throwaway277432 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #65
wobbly_bush wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you also willing to pay the extra Apple tax for this convenience instead of expecting the subscription provider to eat those costs?

Depends on the product and the tax. Looks like I'm paying more via IAP for Youtube ($16 vs $12/mo) and Audible ($16 vs $8/mo ???) according to the prices listed on their website. Half of the services out there probably charge you extra just because you don't have to go through their scummy "cancel subscription" website pipeline. They probably lose millions on that along with the fact that I get an iOS notification wh…

YouTube is very easy to cancel and not at all scummy, you just need to click one button and it works. Easy 4$ saved per month. I cancelled and then resubscribed at least 5 times this year and it was never an issue (I'm trying to cut down on YouTube which is why I cancelled so many times).

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#157

Post by nsteel »

iamacyborg wrote: post #55
prepend wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but if you see 20,000 more ads you might have interest. Spotify is willing to try.

The only thing that’ll make me do is badger the folks at Tidal and other streaming co’s to create a proper alternative to Spotify Connect that works on my Yamaha hardware.

What is wrong with Tidal Connect (https://tidal.com/Connect) ? Honest question, have never used it. Don't you need to badger Yamaha to support it in your old hardware? But even if the old hardware was getting updates, Yamaha don't seem to be a partner (https://tidal.com/supported-devices?filter=tidal-connect).

You can cheaply add Tidal Connect support to an old amp with a LinkPlay-based product e.g. https://www.arylic.com/products/up2stream-pro-receiver-board

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#158

Post by joshstrange »

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.…

> Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle?

I have zero issue in paywalled podcasts, in fact I pay about $35/mo across various podcasts. Every single one of those gives me a special RSS feed with a token in the URL. There is no need for a service/platform to support this, it works perfectly today. A few of those podcasts are from Patreon and they have support for this built in (not that the "tech" behind this is groundbreaking). I almost always pay if it's an option because I abhor ads in every form.

I don't listen to many "mass market" podcasts, I think the largest podcast I listen to regularly (aside from some NPR ones I occasionally listen to) is ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast, which probably pales in comparison to the "Serials" and similar) and they offer a subscription ($8/mo).

Re: Audiobooks on Spotify

#159

Post by solarkraft »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #111
fleddr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Software interfaces in general have regressed severely since the mid-2000s. Media players are a perfect example. There was 10x more functionality in Winamp or Windows Media Player than we get in Spotify or Apple Music today. What is going on? Why are things getting dumber? Are we just optimizing too hard for the lowest common denominator and the average user wants things to be dead simple? I don't want to believe sof…

> Are we just optimizing too hard for the lowest common denominator and the average user wants things to be dead simple?

Yup, but note that things can be both simple and powerful. I think there's also for some reason the expectation that people want fewer features on mobile than on desktop devices.

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