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Audiobooks Offline

Backup and offline your Amazon's Audible library so you can protect the content that paid for fair use of.

The How

audible quickstart uses the auto config tool and is worth running before you start.

Next run audible activation-bytes you need to pass this value to ffmpeg to decrypt the audio stream. Set it as an environment variable if you wish.

audible library list

audible download --aax --asin B015ELUYL4

ffmpeg -activation_bytes your-bytes-go-here -i booktitle.aax booktitle-drm-free.mp3

Now What?

You have a DRM free .mp3 or .flac file of your books... Now what do you do with them. Burn em' to a CD? USB stick in the car? Send them to your phone to play on a media player?...Does my phone have a media player?

My Choice

I'm using audiobookshelf as a self hosted service and its been flawless. See my docker compose for a working audiobookshelf container.

Another option is with Jellyfin since they have audio streaming as well as video. I am a heavy Jellyfin user already and may try my books on it at a later date. lmk how chapters go if you do. Also, a recommended cross mobile platform app recommended for Jellyfin music is Symfonium.

Note:

Alternatively AAXtoMP3 does a great job of converting the aax to a variety of codecs (AAC command shown below) whilst keeping metadata and cover-art intact.

AAXtoMP3 -a -A your-bytes booktitle.aax