Reminder that "self hosting" media is an extra step, you can do the same with "saving media locally and playing it"
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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But how will I bring up my NAS in conversations at parties?
Tell them you'll bring the music but instead play books at them during quiet times...lord of the rings anyone?
what is thisyarty thing
The author actually explains that his original solution was just saving them locally on his phone and playing them from there, but that was too much legwork for his wife to want to switch from a cloud service like Audible. So the whole self hosting part is to become “Audible” for his wife lol.
I feel like the answer to the question "why are you self-hosting" is almost always "because my significant other/family/friends use it"
One of the big draws for me is the scrobbling, across a lot of my self-hosted apps. Comics, shows, books, whatever. I love that I can watch some of a show, or read some of a comic series, then go months without worrying about where I was before picking it back up again. I can pick up where I left off, which is one area where simply having files on a file-system falls short.
And it's a valid point. Services like audible and Netflix offer something that can not be matched by traditional storage, that's why they are profitable to begin with. Streaming content instead of downloading it to each device is a good selling point, one which is covered by self hosting this stuff.
That's great, until you want to switch devices while still keeping your progress.
TLDR: Audiobookshelf
Been selfhosting it for a few years. Audible is an interesting comparison and I agree with the author that ABS is superior. But it's not without its issues and challenges. Any good podcast app has vastly superior UX. That said, I'm a hoarder and I just have to store every podcast I subscribe to for some reason.
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.
I knew it was gonna be Audiobookshelf as soon as I saw the headline. Great software. My wife has all her books hosted on it on our NAS, and it barely takes any resources. I have it hosted alongside Plex in a VM on a teeny tiny Ryzen 5500u Mini-PC.
Edit - I'm even more amused that I have almost the same configuration as the article author, Proxmox server hosting the guest, just mine's an Ubuntu 24.04 server VM instead of LXC. That little server hosts Plex, Audiobookshelf, Lyrion, and AssetUPnP, pretty much handles all my media stuff, plus a separate Home Assistant VM, and has resources to spare.
Prologue on iOS does a great job of device syncing my Plex audiobook library. And no subscription requirement for once.
I just wish their official app would get out of beta already. It’s been stuck in limbo forever.
Check out plappa
Thanks for the heads up! Tired of trying to make the Emby app work for audiobooks.
I was really confused about this cause the app is great. Googled Plappa and realized you were stuck on IOS. My heart goes out to you.
Anyone does this with jellyfin?
Ive tried for a wile, but the features are just lacking. Finamp is good for music now. But for audiobook i am firm on audiobookshelf.
Doesn't work, I feel. I've been looking at alternatives, gonna take a look at this audiobookshelf now.
No, but plex has terrible support for audiobooks.
If it’s anything like Emby, it blows for audiobooks. Lacking essential features, and regularly loses its place.
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