If you are looking for free audio content, Spotify’s Word genre offers a diverse of spoken word materials, podcasts, audiobooks, poetry , short stories and more.  Right now the collection is somewhat small, but is growing.

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find:

• A collection of public domain audiobooks including works like The Great Gatsby and The Secret Garden.
• An interesting selection of poetry, including readings by Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost and W.B. Yeats.
• A diverse literature and short story selection, ranging from Dickens to Russian and French literature.
• Radio dramasand spoken word performances in crime, sci-fi and vintage categories. (There’s even an selection of audio dramas from the sci-fi classic, Blake’s 7.)
• A collection of speeches, including famous speeches by Martin Luther King, Joseph Campbell and Noam Choamsky.
• Want to learn a foreign language? There are lessons in audio courses in Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese and even Irish.
• There are also playlists for self-help, spirituality and guided meditation

All of this content is available on Spotify’s free tier. The only downside is that while Spotify allows ad-supported on-demand listening for free on desktops and tablets, the service is shuffle only for smartphone users on the free tier. If you want to take full advantage of the content on your phone, you will need to be a Premium subscriber.

As audiobooks and more spoken word content continue to rise in popularity, the addition of  the Word genre is a big plus for Spotify. What do you think?