At approximately 18:40 I thought I might acquire some kind of audiobook… thing. Maybe Audible.com? They have some subscription thing, right? At 19:35 I gave up trying to access Pandora’s Lab, part of the content included in my trial month, to have a nap.
Re-envigorated by my nap I was able to listen to the book I acquired using my monthly credit. Success! Does that mean I can access that Pandora’s Lab thing as well? Does it bollocks. I can buy it when I visit audible.com using Google Chrome – the same browser which let me listen to the aforementioned book, so I’m logged in it would seem – but listen to it as included content? Nope.
The Windows 10 App does show it as included, which seems like a step in the right direction:
This doesn’t work quite the entire way:
After reading up on this it turns out that their Windows 10 App doesn’t yet have support for Audible Plus content. Wow! So that’s where the Windows platform is at right now, getting the cold shoulder from content providers?
Well, okey then. I guess they only really support mobile apps? Nope, not Android at least. It also just let’s me buy that book.
So I’m coming away from this somewhat unclear on the benefits of Audible Plus. I’m not entirely confident in buying books from them either given this evening’s little expedition. Maybe I need to buy an iPhone, a Kindle or Alexa to have solid access to their content? I’ll admit that a Kindle would probably be okey but I wouldn’t be able to show my face at work carrying an iPhone. Techies don’t use iPhones! I’m not even sure I would be able to look myself in the mirror if I used an iPhone. Yet it would be better than an Alexa which in turn is only slightly better than being kidnapped by an Eastern European organ-harvesting syndicate.
What is it with providers of audio content? Because this is largely my experience with iTunes as well. I’ve set up a multi-master MariaDB cluster in the time it takes me to jump through their hoops of updates of the iTunes executable, my account details, managing which units can access me content et cetera. I haven’t played any of the content on my iTunes account for at least two years at this point.
Netflix? My mom watches lots of their content on her television and she’s not exactly a grade A hacker. Sure I had to set it up for her but it’s largely painless from that point. So for some reason video content is easy to access from many devices while audio content is provided by organisations that compete with one another in who can most closely resemble a Soviet era bureaucracy. “Here is your car. Please wait 8-10 years for your petrol purchasing-license to clear.”