On Wehear, you can join a team of audiobook narrators, access a library of classic titles, and listen to episodes and books written and recorded by other community members. When browsing the catalog, you can find teasers of the 10-15 minute long episodes, the number of credits that go to the author, and a clear label for paid titles.
Wehear is an unusual audiobook platform. It's built mainly by the community of creators around it, and you can choose between fanfiction, romances, paranormal fantasies, or young adult stories written by enthusiasts and aspiring authors. It can also be a great place to start if you consider recording narration for books.
When you play a book or its episode, you get a simple media player that lets you speed up the recording, jump backward and forward, but also play and pause at any point or set up a timer for the app to turn off. Once your book downloads, you can launch it even when you're offline, and you can also actively engage with the community by recording or listening to the comments made by other users. You can download Wehear for iOS and Android, or use it through the website.
Why should I download Wehear?
If you enjoy listening to audiobooks in series or daily-released chapters that don't run too long, then Wehear is an excellent option for you. It brings together full-size audiobooks with podcast-like episodes of fiction written by the community, unlike other audiobook platforms. The episodic format that Wehear offers is an ideal option if you don't have the time to listen to hour-long chapters. Most of the episodes run for 5-15 minutes, and you can play them when you need a quick piece of content while commuting or just prefer shorter forms. Most of the books on Wehear are updated daily, and you can follow along at your own pace.
Wehear has an extensive selection of genres and titles, with the biggest one being romance novels with a lot of various subgenres, like bad boy dramas, paranormal passion, and revenge plots. Apart from that, you'll also find such categories as fantasy epics, urban fiction, werewolf sagas, teen thrillers, and more. For each of the sections, you can check the most popular titles or choose between curated playlists to discover new content.
While Wehear is a community-built platform, it doesn't mean the quality of recordings is subpar. Many titles you'll find in its library have a full-cast narration, professional sound effects, and background music. This adds to the immersion when listening and makes the storytelling stand out, like it did with serialized dramas back in the radio days.
The more you listen to on Wehear, the better its recommendation engine becomes as it adjusts to your listening habits. It takes into account your favorites, completed episodes, and genre preferences to offer you a personalized playlist, but you can also choose from the ones created by the Wehear editorial team. You can rate each title, check the general score, view or add comments, follow your favorite narrators, or even vote on the best stories.
With most stories on Wehear, you can start listening for free to the first couple of chapters, but then you need to have the in-app currency to unlock the next ones. You can buy coins through microtransactions or gain them by logging in daily and joining challenges. Wehear gives you the option to listen to content you won't find in other places and features content in multiple languages, though English is the primary language. You can download Wehear and use it on smartphones or tablets with iOS and Android, but also log in through a website.
Is Wehear free?
Yes, you can join and use Wehear for free at first, as most stories offer their first episodes for free.
However, to continue listening to a story you like, you will have to spend coins, the Wehear in-app currency. You can earn coins by completing different in-app challenges or simply buy them through the Wehear app.
What operating systems are compatible with Wehear?
You can use the service through its website, but if you're looking to listen to the stories on the go, then it's best to download Wehear to your mobile device. The platform works with iOS 13.0 or newer and Android 5.0 or higher.
With Wehear, you can listen to tracks offline, get push notifications when a new episode is released, and customize the playback speed. Your progress in a title is synced across devices, so you can always pick up where you left off.
What are the alternatives to Wehear?
LibriVox is an audiobook platform sustained by volunteers who record and publish works from the public domain. It offers thousands of audiobooks in its library, and the entire platform is free of cost and ads. It's perfect if you want to listen to literary classics, and you can use LibriVox on iOS, Android, and the web.
Audiobooks.com is a large audiobook service with over 300,000 titles in its library, spanning different genres. To use the service, you need to get a subscription that unlocks one free audiobook a month or buy each audiobook separately. All content found on Audiobooks.com is recorded in a professional studio, and the service works on Android, iOS, and web.
Audible from Amazon is the most popular platform for audiobooks. It offers 600,000+ books in its catalog and works globally in different languages. Apart from ebooks, you can also find podcasts, Audible original titles, and even full-cast performances. You can either subscribe to one of their paid tiers or purchase books individually as you go. Audible works on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Alexa devices.
