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Comment by douche | Hacker News Reader

I would pay double or triple for Audible if they didn't wrap their audiobooks up in an awful DRM that doesn't work with my ipod-knockoff.

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They put the DRM in place so they can continue to charge lower rates that more people are willing to pay because the content isn't as easily pirated (for which they make no money at all).

What device do you have? What prevents that device from supporting the DRM Audible uses?

Oh, it's some sort of $20 SanDisk copy of the original iPod Nano from ten years ago. Plays MP3s beautifully, but that is about it.

So I ended up buying some files from Audible, then had the choice of resorting to torrenting the ripped versions or using some dodgy converter to extract something useful. Or cancelling the subscription and getting a refund, which is what I did.

Sounds like Audible has pretty good customer service!

I see a little incongruity here.

You're willing to pay $20 10 years ago for media player.

Audible subscriptions are about $15/month, with additional titles approximately $15 (or more) a piece. You're willing to spend perhaps $30–$45/month for a subscription or $30–45 per title?

  1 year Audible subscription: $360 (at $30/month)
  10 years: $3,600.

  Apple iPod nano: $150.
  1 year Audible subscription: $180 (at $15/month)
  Total for first year: $330.
  Each additional year: $180.
  After 10 years: $1,950

If you don't care for Apple, I'm sure there are comparable choices available.

There are likely other trade-offs you're likely taking into account as well (e.g., some people are opposed to DRM on principle, but it's not clear to me that's your argument). But if money can solve your problem which you imply by offering to pay more, it looks like you have options to use Audible for the price you're willing to pay.

If I've done the math wrong, or made some assumptions you don't agree to, please feel free to correct me.

No, you're correct; I ought to just knuckle under and spend the money, if I want to consume from Audible. But I picked up the current MP3 player on a flier, and have become used to it - it does what I want it to, in a very simple and straight-forward way.

The content that I've spent money on already dwarfs the purchase of the player. Although that content is DRM-free, so I am free to use it on this player, or any of my various laptops and desktops, and any future devices that I buy. And it is in a standard format that virtually any audio playback application understands. And I can just download those files normally, without having to install the weird Audible download manager.

I believe the selection is smaller but there is also Downpour [0]. DRM-free which means you should be just fine playing on your MP3 Player. The cost is comparable to Audible ($13/mo instead of $15/mo) and you get much the same deal: 1 audio-book per month with the "credit" you get.

[0] http://www.downpour.com/

Hadn't heard of this! Thanks for the link. I wonder what their business model is like. It looks like they've been around for at least 3 years, so that's a positive sign that they're doing something right.

Just testing.

It's the blades, not the razor :)

Yeah, cost of content definitely dwarfs the device over time. I'm not a huge fan of DRM (region locking particularly chafes), but I understand why DRM exists, and as long as it's reasonable (for some value of reasonable :).

One last parting gentle ribbing: the devices that play DRM-protected media usually play the DRM-free stuff, too ;)

A few years back I was in the same boat, rocking a Sansa Clip and no smartphone. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but the way I consumed Audible content was:

- Burning to CD, which their software did - Ripping the CD to wav using other software - (optional) chopping up the .wav files into 5 minute chunks - Compressing everything to MP3 (V8 VBR)

Not sure if they yanked this feature, but worked then!

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