InAudio and Spotify

[alhawke]

Any of you publish through InAudio (formerly Findaway)? A very frustrating issue that's come up since InAudio's merger is rather ironic. Audiobooks on InAudio are not being transferred to Spotify for sale. I contacted Spotify and they suggested I submit an audiobook separately to Spotify. I submitted the audio to Spotify with all the files and it was erased by Spotify.

 

I'm awaiting the next step here with their response. But email contacts are through InAudio AND Spotify. I thought they merged? 

Anyone out there with the same problem?

Between this and their totally botched promotion options last month--which cost me audiobook sales--I'm having barrels of fun with InAudio (remember, for those on InAudio, if you drop price audiobooks in series for a Chirp deal, InAudio will not necessarily drop prices through their promotion tab. It might be fixed, but it was broken and I had to contact customer service to fix).

[The Bass Bagwhan]

I've just finally got a good result from a very, very, very ( did I mention very?) long technical glitch with InAudio and Tilpalti, and it definitely was an issue their end. I can say that Support from both was determined to help and sympathetic about what was a weird problem.  But it did all indicate that the restructure has wreaked havoc in their respective websites and likely Spotify too.
Audiobooks in Findaway prior to the merge were automatically switched to Spotify, but now you have to treat them as two completely separate entities.
I imagine it's because the royalty versus streaming payments are chalk and cheese.
They must be burning the midnight oil, but Support is definitely trying hard to fix a shed load of glitches.

[Bill Hiatt]

I'm not a proponent of, "If it aint broke, don't fix it," but I am a proponent of, "If it aint broke, don't break it."

It seems as if Spotify took a system that worked and put a lot of energy into making one that didn't work--which they then had to spend more energy fixing. Maybe Spotify should have just bought Findaway if it wanted but kept it working more or less the way it had been.

[alhawke]

It's kinda funny... well, not really that funny... but customer service for "Spotify" audiobooks has essentially been split by the merger. Spotify customer service seems to work completely independently from InAudio. As a result, you have to know which company to speak with to talk about the same audiobook released in Spotify BY InAudio.

InAudio wasn't helpful with my concerns.

Spotify instructed me to resubmit my audiobook on Spotify as if Spotify is a different platform. The trouble with that is, they also said you can publish on Spotify first and then click the button that links Spotify to InAudio. But what happens if you already released the audio on InAudio, click transfer, and submit the audio again on Spotify? Two audiobooks, I assume. And they couldn't tell me what would happen. I still could get a duplicate because I clicked on Spotify as a distributor retailer under InAudio. But I've been assured that InAudio won't be submitting publications to their own store.

If all that makes no sense it's because I'm tired of trying. Basically, in the old system, you submitted your audiobook on Findaway and it popped up on Spotify. Now, I advise, if you're publishing with InAudio, you do this: publish your audiobook on InAudio AND publish it on Spotify. Do not click the share button or you might end up with two audios.

What I don't get is what Bill is saying^. "If it ain't broke, don't break it." Why on Earth did they change it at all???