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Audiobooks to play on a Tonie Box

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HappyChris Tue 20-Jul-21 00:40:15

I need help finding a good source of appropriate audiobooks/music suitable for beloved grandaughter. She turns 6 very soon and is getting a TonieBox device which I discovered too late can only play unencrypted tracks. All our current stuff is Amazon/Audible/Google based, so unusable.

My problem is that most stories/songs are designed to be played on dedicated apps and thus encrypted are unable to be used elsewhere. The very few open-source libraries of material I've found are not English-English thus missing local accents, nuances, etc. This is not critical, just looking for UK-related content.

Anybody dealt with this before?

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JackyB Tue 20-Jul-21 08:39:34

Never thought of it. Both my older DGC have Tonie boxes (they have been around here in Germany for years) and are happy to play their Tonies over and over again. Brilliant invention, when I think back to the cassette tapes our children had. We have only ever used the Tonies (which admittedly are quite expensive but indestructible - unless, I suppose, you put them near a magnet)

You can get an empty Tonie figure, download the Tonie app and read stories for them which you upload. Their parents can then download your sound file onto the Tonie figure.

This has been a boon for us with the DGC living so far away.

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JackyB Tue 20-Jul-21 08:42:10

For the old cassettes which I still have, I am converting them to MP3s and storing them on fun-shaped flash drives for them to listen to in the car.

I haven't found the ideal way to convert them yet and we must have over 50 of those cassettes.

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Newmom101 Tue 20-Jul-21 09:54:56

You can get an empty Tonie figure, download the Tonie app and read stories for them which you upload. Their parents can then download your sound file onto the Tonie figure.

I was going to suggest this. You can download to the blank Tonie figure, called a creative Tonie, and add any audio you have saved on your computer/tablet/smartphone. You can add up to 90mins of content per creative Tonie. You can purchase audiobooks in mp3 format from Waterstones which you should then be able to add to the tonie.

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Newmom101 Tue 20-Jul-21 09:57:22

You could also buy stories on CDs, and download them to a computer to transfer to the tonie.

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HappyChris Tue 20-Jul-21 14:52:10

We have the empty Tonie figure that came with the 'starter set' and my present quest is to put something (anything!) onto it and would prefer to get 'legal' files if possible. After the birthday is over I'll have a go at removing the DRM encryption from stories I might download.

Another potential problem is the these Creative Tonies have, as you say, a 90 minute recording limit and most audiobooks are much larger than that. Maybe short stories, then?

CDs? I've heard of them... Do I get the 78 or 33 rpm ones??**

Any suggestions re sources, folks?

** A joke, of course. (I hope)

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