Smart Audiobook Player has been my go-to for a couple years now. Free version is pretty feature complete, good performance too. I’ll listen all day at work and still be at like 70-80% battery on my old ass phone, whereas the shitty audible app will leave me at like 40% or less with minimal interaction.

qbit on pc, flud on android

Funny enough, Hulu has been doing a paid+ads tier from the get-go, long before other services started jumping on this bandwagon.

Never made sense to me why anyone would want it then, and it still doesn’t make sense even now that all the services are offering similar plans. People pining for that cable TV experience maybe?