The trouble with Audible podcasts

Audible spends a lot of money on original audio shows (“podcasts”, if you like), but I can’t promote them in Podnews, and I’d quite like to, but I can’t.

Here’s why.

First - in Podnews, the image artwork, the links, etc, are all automatic and come from a standard podcast feed (or via the open Spotify API). But, Audible shows have no standard RSS podcast feed, so I can’t grab any of this information from the feeds. There is no API into the Audible catalog either, as far as I know, so it’s impossible to grab the image and everything to give it parity with other shows I promote.

(I do have a private API into Amazon Music, which took quite some time to achieve - but while Amazon Music and Audible are run by the same company, they don’t work the same way).

But, it’s harder than just laziness of not wanting to hunt for images and artwork and stuff. The way Audible works is that they give a different SKU for every country. See the number starting “B09” in the links below.

https://www.audible.com.au/podcast/Fiasco-The-AIDS-Crisis/B09SVRNKKR

https://www.audible.co.uk/podcast/Fiasco-The-AIDS-Crisis/B09SVSCG6X

https://www.audible.com/podcast/Fiasco-The-AIDS-Crisis/B09SVPH27K

If you’re reading this in the US, try following the .co.uk or the .com.au link. You’ll be taken to the front page of the .com website. You’ll see a tiny piece of text saying “do you want to go to Audible.co.uk?” which will give you details of Fiasco in the UK but you won’t be able to use the links to buy from, because you don’t live in the UK. So, assuming that I only link to Audible US, everyone outside the US gets a broken link and a bad experience. Since I live and work outside the US, it’s a broken experience for me. I can’t link to every random SKU that Audible have produced for this show, even if I can programmatically get in.

I’ve written a scraper for Audible US SKUs that grabs the image and a link, but that still fails for the other 180+ countries in the world, who can’t use the link I discover.

Amazon Music, incidentally, uses the same SKU globally. Audible doesn’t.

If I can’t link to it, I can’t mention it. It’s a fundamental roadblock to linking to a piece of content on the “world wide web”.

I wish they’d fix it.

Of interest - Apple Podcasts almost works the same way for their paid-for channels. A link for me into Apple’s US store doesn’t let me purchase anything from there. A link will take me to the Australian storefront - but I lose the podcast I was linked to. However, the IDs are the same; and I’ve fixed a geo-aware link, so that this link to FIASCO will go to the Apple country store wherever you are. (It’s an affiliate-coded link.)