Audiobooks are amazing, no question! They’re perfect for immersing yourself in a new world, for listening to stories on the go, and for helping the joy of reading become more accessible. There are also increasingly more options available for where to get your next audiobook, from Audible to Libro.fm and now even Spotify! It can be a little tricky to navigate audiobooks on Spotify, as it does not track your progress in the same way an app like Libby can, and listeners without Premium may have to put up with ads every now and then between chapters; however, I believe it is well worth the minor interruption because…free books!
For those of us with Premium, audiobooks on Spotify offer you the opportunity to listen to books without having to pay for another subscription service, saving you money and allowing you to access some great reads at the same time. For more information on how to find your way around downloading and searching for audiobooks on Spotify, check out our handy dandy guide!
On other services these playlists are often junk, but Spotify has really nailed its algorithm and the results are always filled with gems to discover. The first playlist is Discover Weekly, which. Spotify is available for Android and iOS devices for free, so you can also find it through the Google Play Store or at the App Store. Once you get it, create your account and subscribe to the service!
Having recently discovered this service myself, I was delighted to discover that it features not only public domain classics, but a thriving library of contemporary reads, too. It is always a comfort to know that there are so many options out there for people to engage with an eclectic range of stories! So, I have compiled a list of some of my favourite audiobooks available for free on Spotify that you should check out, including YA, middle grade, and historical fiction.
The new Discover Quickly web app brings up your Discovery Weekly playlist as a grid of album covers. When you mouse over one, the song starts playing halfway through, and you can click the album. Secure Account Log In. Please complete all fields below.
Descendant of the Crane by Joan He
![Discover Spotify App Discover Spotify App](/uploads/1/3/3/9/133937483/434669168.jpg)
Princess Hesina unexpectedly rises to her kingdom’s throne after her father dies and must untangle the webs of lies of her royal court. An adept deceiver and confident in her belief that the king was a victim of assassination, Hesina teams up with a mysterious rogue, fated to have his destiny intertwined with hers, to uncover the truth. However, when prejudice and fear put obstacles in her path to justice, Hesina must lift her kingdom out of darkness by any means necessary.
This YA political fantasy is set in a vivid world inspired by China and focuses on the difficult moral choices that rulers face in the pursuit of justice. Hesina frequently questions whether her decisions are right, and must often dabble with dangerous, deadly options for the greater good. Full of suspicious characters and lush prose, the steadier pace makes this stand out from the crowd within the YA fantasy genre. Narrated by Nancy Wu (who does some fantastic voices) this slow-burn drama is full of twists and turns that will have you wanting to go back and follow the trail of crumbs you may have missed along the way.
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By signing up you agree to our terms of useGhost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega
Lucely Luna lives with her single father and the ghosts of her extended family in Florida, but her everyday life is soon disrupted when she finds herself wrapped up in a spooky adventure to save her town from evil spirits. Whoops, she probably shouldn’t have accidentally summoned them! Teaming up with her best friend Syd, Chunk the cat, and witch grandma Babette, Lucely must be brave and face her fears, dragons, and ancient grudges.
This middle grade book is an adorable delight for any age, and should easily take its place among the pantheon of cute and cozy fall reads. There is so much heart to this story; Lucely’s friendship with Syd is the sweetest thing ever, as is her relationship to her ghostly grandmother and cousins. A smart, compassionate, and action-packed tale, Almarie Guerra’s narration brings a dynamic energy to every character and tension to the more knee-knocking scenes. Perfect for little ones and bigger ones alike!
The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
A resilient, enduring story of perseverance and the horrors of war, The Mountains Sing follows the Tran family throughout various conflicts in Vietnam, from the French occupation to the lingering ghosts of trauma that follow them into the contemporary period. The perspective shifts between Tran Dieu Lan, a steadfast grandmother who details the difficult decisions she had to make to save her family from tragedy during rising Communist unrest, and her granddaughter Huong, who comes of age during the Vietnam War.
This book is poetic and moving, with the relentless struggle and violence balanced with the lasting sense of empathy and love that the Tran family depend on for their survival. While it is harrowing, it is intimate and compelling, and shines a light on the nuances of conflict. Narrated by Quyen Ngo, this epic will immediately sweep you up into the past as well as challenge your perspective of conflict, class tension, and probably keep you up late into the night crossing your fingers for the wellbeing of the family.
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
Narrated by the author, the coming-of-age tale of the eponymous Jonny is a tragic and hilarious story of culture, queerness, and sex. Jonny is a Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer cyber-sexworker who, en route to the funeral of his mother’s boyfriend, reminisces on what it was like to grow up in, fall in love, and discover the layers of his identity. Whitehead’s narration is dry in tone, with a tinge of nostalgia, and the prose is simultaneously elegant and jarring.
Jonny’s narrative is funny in the same way a slightly bonkers injury might be; you understand that the trials of his life are horrifying, often dehumanising, and undoubtedly scarring, however his sardonic, crass humour softens the blow without erasing the struggles he suffers as a consequence of prejudice. As such, the story becomes a fascinating portrayal of trauma; how to live with it, how to navigate the world, and the giant, glittery middle finger you can flaunt at those who attempt to smother you in it.
Spotify has proven itself to be a great resource for helping us embrace reading in new ways; if you are looking for some music to listen to while reading a physical or ebook, we have a whole list of super playlists to get you into the zone. While you’re there, also consider checking out some of our podcasts for more bookish content, whether you’re looking for some news with Book Riot The Podcast or Get Booked for some more great recommendations!
Courtesy of Spotify
If the Discover Weekly playlist is your favorite part of Spotify, here’s something that’s bound to make your day: A new, Spotify-compatible tool called Discover Quickly takes everything you love about Discover Weekly and makes it easier, faster, and even more of an Experience-with-a-capital-E. A free-to-use, web-based tool, it's simple to access; all you need to do to get in on it is go to Discover Quickly’s website and login with your Spotify account. You’ll be surfing from tune to tune in no time — and you might just stumble upon your new favorite artist while you’re at it.
Spotify introduced the Discover Weekly feature way back in 2015. Each Monday, it presents a new, two-hour playlist (nostalgically referred to by the company as a mixtape) specific to each individual user based both on what they’ve been listening to lately and on other songs and artists that might be related to those habits. The tool was an immediate hit, although it hasn’t been without its complaints. It’s not always easy to navigate if you want to explore the artists that appear on it a little more thoroughly, for example; what's more, as some users observed, it can occasionally get “stale,” recommending the same tunes, albums, and artists over and over again.
That’s where Discover Quickly comes in. It's not an official Spotify tool, although its developers, Aliza Aufrichtig and Edward Clement Lee, do both work at Spotify. It uses Spotify’s public API to bring an exploratory quality to music discovery that’s a little more like a scavenger hunt that it is like pouring through pages and pages of lists. As Aufrichtig put to Gizmodo, “There’s very little in Discover Quickly that you can’t do on your regular Spotify app, but we chose to foreground the activity of traversing music quickly and visually.”
Discover Quickly provides a fast and easy way for you to preview the tracks in your Spotify-generated Discover Weekly playlist. Instead of needing to click on and listen to individual in the playlist — or listening the playlist itself straight through in its entirety — Discover Quickly displays the album covers of all those songs as a grid and allows you to hear a short clip of each track just by mousing over the album cover of your choice. If you like what you hear, you can click on the album cover both to bookmark the song and pull up more info about both it and the artist — and from there, you can begin clicking though and through and through, almost like you’re traveling through wormholes made of sound.
My own experience navigating the interface has been positively delightful so far. I’ve been listening to a lot of Studio Ghibli scores and covers lately (it is excellent writing music), so right now, my Discover Weekly playlist is full of contemporary classical, acoustic, and anime-related suggestions — for example, a cover of the theme from the 2002 Ghibli film The Cat Returns by the Kyoto Harp Ensemble, something from an album of Stravinsky, John Adams, and Pierre Boulez music performed by pianists Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland, and a single by Australian singer/songwriter Pekoe.
In Discover Quickly, it looks like this:
Free Spotify App
Clicking on the stuff I like pops it into the little bookmark tab up top:
The number in the tab indicates how many songs you’ve saved.
If you expand the tab, you can play entire songs by clicking on them, click “save all tracks” to add them all to your Spotify library, or add ‘em to either a new or existing playlist of your own creation by clicking “add all to playlist” and either selecting “new playlist” (to make a new one) or the name of a playlist you’ve already made (to add them to an existing one). Or, you decide you’re not as wild about one song as you originally thought, clicking the “x” next to it will remove it from the list. Music apps better than spotify.
Scrolling down, meanwhile, lets you explore the artist a bit more fully — you can click their name to see more from them, the name of the album the song on your Discover Weekly track is from to see the complete album, or either of the “Recommend songs” tags to get recommendations based either on the song itself or the artist more generally.
Free google speaker spotify family. Gizmodo’s Adam Clark Estes described the exploration process as “[falling] into rabbit hole after rabbit hole of music, discovering all kinds of new stuff along the way”— an assessment with which I would agree. I don’t often use Discover Weekly because I’ve always found the tool a bit clunky to navigate within Spotify; with Discover Quickly, though, I might finally start utilizing it regularly.
Discover Spotify Playlist
There are lots of other ways to explore, too — and the best part is, it’s free. All you have to do is go to Discover Quickly’s homepage and login with your Spotify account; then you’re good to go. https://newgf388.weebly.com/blog/spotify-app-remote-sample-access-token-null.