I just wish their official app would get out of beta already. It’s been stuck in limbo forever.
Reminder that “self hosting” media is an extra step, you can do the same with “saving media locally and playing it”
Nice.
I was paying for a family subscription for a major audiobook provider for a while. That changed after I used a 3rd party app to listen to their audiobooks and apparently broke their eula, and they were threatening to sue me and my 7 year old kid for it. Kinda killed the spirit to pay for their service.
In addition to self-hosting, I’ll throw out a few other alternatives:
Free:
Paid:
- For a user experience closer to Audible, I went with libro.fm. You can pick a local, independent bookstore that gets a portion of the sales. Their catalog is pretty extensive as well, have been able to find most books I’m interested in. Books are DRM-free and you can pause your membership.
- Downpour - DRM-free as well
DRM-free is important IMO because otherwise you’re at the mercy of the platform and if the company ever changes its Terms of Use or wipes your account, you lose your purchases. Amazon have remotely deleted books from users’ libraries in the past or replaced them with modified copies (e.g. Roald Dahl books). Kindle announced last month they won’t let you download your eBooks via USB so it’s possible Audible could see changes for the worse in the future as well.
For those on iOS looking for a companion app, check out plappa for a great app to access your Audiobookshelf/jellyfin instance. It works flawlessly for me, no data collection, and it allows downloading books in advance for on the go if you choose not to have external access to your server.
Nice article! I’ve been using Audiobookshelf (win) for a year and a bit. Works great with one exception, I can’t upgrade it past 2.17.16 on my Win11 box (non-docker). Any attempt to take it past that gives a non-responsive server. Not a big deal because that version is pretty stable.
What I really want is a a similar project for epub files. I’ve not been able to find a web based library that allows easy download and auth based management.
I’d suggest looking into Kavita. I’ve been using it for a while now and it works great as a server to read and organize my epubs.
jellyfin with OPDS plugin. you can download books directly from any OPDS compatible reader (Koreader, Moonreader+, etc)
That’s a solved problem, the answer is Calibre. If you want a nicer interface and some other fluff you can install calibre-web as a frontend for it. Calibre-web is very interesting if you have a Kobo e-reader because you can configure it as your store and get the books you add to calibre to magically appear on the e-reader with a nice download button next to it.
Audiobookshelf supports EPUB files and other ebook formats. You can put them alongside audiobooks (offering a UI option to either read or listen) or use purely ebooks although obviously a little overkill if you aren’t using the audio features at all
I use the Voice app on Fdriod but it doesnt do syncing that I know about. I fully recommend instead of using Audible.
If you dont own the files, then you dont really own the media.
AudioAnchor + Syncthing for Android via F-Droid has been my mobile audiobook app stack. Takes some setting up and concatenating audiobook mp3s into mkv’s for convenience, but I haven’t had to touch it since… 2020?
Yes, I am aware of where this is posted and am prepared for my inevitable crucifixion as a result. But, like, is this really a problem that requires a self hosting solution? That seems like quite the overcomplication to me unless you absolutely require access to your entire selection on multiple devices that will have 24/7 network connections.
MP3’s take up negligible amounts of storage space on modern devices and can be played on anything, and can be easily taken with you anywhere including out of network range.
I guess teaching people how to drag-and-drop audio files onto their phone and open them with VLC would be a much shorter article.
Yeeeah, gonna have to disagree with that. Having dead simple access to your library on any device is amazing. ABS syncs your listening position between devices, has offline downloading, supports rich metadata, collections, customized sleep timers, and quite a bit more.
Yup. Audio books aren’t very big once converted to a reasonable format and with the amount of space these days, I can comfortably keep a dozen on me at all times.
Has anybody any experience with storyteller?
