The Best Non-Music Tracks to Stream on Spotify

Although the Spotify streaming platform is best known for its massive music library, sometimes one of your perfectly curated playlists might not be what you’re looking for. In fact, a music listening session could be out of the question altogether. Luckily, there are a few other options if you’re after something a little different. Particularly if you’re a fan of spoken word. Here are just some of the cool and interesting things you can stream on Spotify that aren’t music related.

 

Audiobooks

Although services like Audible tend to be the number one choice for audiobooks, there are a few pieces of classic literary works on Spotify thanks to their availability in the Public Domain. In Spotify, simply search ‘Audiobooks’ or ‘classic books’ and you’ll find plenty of old texts to choose from.

We Recommend: Searching for the artist ‘Eternal Classic Audio Books’ gives you a HUGE list of classic titles to get through, including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and the horror classic Frankenstein.

Comedy

Venturing into the Comedy category doesn’t just get you tracks from The Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords, there’s a wealth of stand up and sketch comedy hidden in there too. For those up for a laugh, you’d be quite surprised at the range of material at hand from iconic comedians including Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor and the late great Robin Williams.

We Recommend: Staying true to our ‘Great British Sound’ motif, we’ve had to go with Eddie Izzard, Ross Noble and the legendary Monty Python.

Poetry and Short Stories

And now for something a bit more serious. Spotify has a wonderful collection of poetry and short stories to lose yourself in on those boring commutes. There’s also a huge library of poetry to delve into, both modern and classic, including the entire works of a writer you’ve probably heard of… William Shakespeare.

We Recommend: The Spotify playlist Women's Lit has a nice collection of classic short stories and literature written by women.

Radio Drama

Once upon a time, radio sets were the centrepiece of the living room and families would gather round them and tune into their favourite dramas. Difficult to image, but completely true! Go back in time and relive those days with some classic broadcasts and radio drama programmes. Sci-Fi, Crime and Mystery dramas are especially catered for here.

We Recommend: The infamous original ‘nation scaring’ 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles is a must-listen.

Famous Speeches

There are lots of iconic spoken word segments from throughout history going horribly unnoticed on Spotify and they’re certainly worth your time. Especially the inspirational and motivational ones coming from the likes of Muhammed Ali and Winston Churchill.

We Recommend: For anyone with an interest in American politics, there are substantial collections of iconic speeches from Presidents of the United States to listen to. Just don’t expect any new additions anytime soon…

Language Learning

For the keen linguists out there, Spotify can be an effective tool in learning a new language. Whether you’re looking for helpful phrases when abroad or more in depth analysis of the nuances in language, there are a range of recordings at hand to listen to. German, Russian, Japanese and Spanish are just a few of the different languages you can learn.

We Recommend: Well this depends on what you want to learn! Searching for the artist ‘Language Superstar’ is a good place to start as they have a wide range of languages covered

Self-Help Techniques

Everyone could use a little self-help sometimes and Spotify have many audio tracks to help you improve and empower your wellbeing. There are plenty of talks from renowned professors including public speaking, time management and yes, even talks on how to train your cat. Maybe we’ll give it a go and see if we can tame Tigger the CA office cat. We’ll share the results soon…

We Recommend: We’re not going to recommend you something in particular here… however we can point you to the Spotify Self Help Gems playlist which has a wealth of topics for you to explore. There really is something for everyone.

NASA Missions

Now this one’s particularly cool. It might not be something for an intense listening session but it’s absolutely worth a research. The original NASA space mission recordings are up on Spotify. You can listen to the original dialogue of the Apollo space missions, giving you a bit of an insight into the fascinating world of space travel that you probably wouldn’t otherwise hear.

We Recommend: After you’ve listened to the legendary ‘The Eagle has landed’ why not try some Public Service Broadcasting? The clever London duo use spoken word from old TV recordings and space missions to create seriously cool indie rock tunes. We use the track ‘Go!’ to test much of our equipment.

Have we missed any other cool audio gems? Make sure you let us know what you listen to on Spotify that isn’t music in the comments below.