Good audiobook app – Downpour.com Review

I've left my original review below. When I tried the app on my iPad, I got the old problem back again: if you have the playback rate set to anything other than 1.0x, the app stops the playback when the phone goes into sleep mode. I was so excited when I didn't get the problem on my phone this morning that I posted the review immediately. That was a mistake. This is such a glaring bug, and such an obvious use case, and has been a bug for so long - YEARS at this point - that I can't rate the app at anything beyond a single star. If the company wants to take on Audible, they have to do better than this. ===== For some reason I always find myself rooting for the underdog. In the audiobook world, Downpour comes in second behind Audible. But for me, that's all the more reason to support it: I get nervous when one company has such a dominating presence in the marketplace. Downpour has most of the standard features: access to your online library, a monthly subscription, the ability to buy additional credits, the ability to speed up playback, to sleep after a specified time, to apply bookmarks. One thing to note: for a long time, there was a bug in the app that caused it to stop playback when the phone went to sleep, IF you were playing back at any speed other than 1.0x. To my surprise this morning, I found that the app now functions correctly, at least when playing back at 1.5x on my iPhone 6s. That happens to be the speed I use most often to listen to audiobooks. Since there haven't been any app updates in the last few months, I wonder if the problem was somehow fixed by a recent upgrade to iOS. If this remains fixed after using the app for a few weeks, I will up my rating to 5 stars. As others have noted, one advantage of Downpour is that the audiobooks are DRM-free. It gives a little extra peace of mind - if the service goes away, you won't lose your investment.
Review by Tad Davis on Downpour.com.