Spotify Wants to Be Your Bookstore.
These days, Spotify is much more than just music, and nothing demonstrates this better than the company’s recent decision to expand into books—not just audiobooks, but traditional paperbacks as well. Today, Spotify announced a major challenge to Amazon’s Kindle and Audible businesses and will soon begin selling physical copies of books in addition to audiobooks. Starting today, the company is also introducing a “Page Match” feature that lets you use your phone’s camera to instantly sync an audiobook with either a paperback or an e-reader.
How do you buy physical books through Spotify?
Spotify’s infrastructure for selling physical books isn’t quite ready yet, but the announcement itself is a surprising move for several reasons. Not only is the streaming service making a serious commitment to supporting physical media, but it’s also implementing the service in a way that supports local bookstores rather than competes with them. This will likely come as a relief to all bookstores that have struggled to compete with Amazon.
To market physical book sales, Spotify is partnering with Bookshop.org , a site that connects shoppers with nearby independent bookstores (though it doesn’t source from them , instead shipping directly from a distributor). 30% of the purchase goes to the chosen bookstore (according to Bookshop.org, this is all profits , though the site retains a portion); if a shopper doesn’t select a specific bookstore to support, 10% of their purchase goes to a shared profit-sharing fund for all bookstores that partner with the site.
This is a surprisingly profitable move for the market, made possible by Bookshop.org’s B-Corporation status. But from a purely commercial perspective, it also means Spotify won’t have to deal with the logistics of book sales: to buy a physical book through the app, users will first need to navigate to one of the service’s audiobooks and then click the ” Add to My Bookshelf” button. After that, they’ll be taken to the Bookshop.org checkout page.
It’s unclear whether Spotify will profit from these sales itself or simply act as an intermediary. The company states that it “meets readers where they are” and is “excited to see the impact Spotify’s scale will have on local bookstores.” But even if there’s no direct profit motive, I’m sure Spotify would be happy to redirect some sales to stores other than Amazon or use a new feature to encourage physical book readers to try the app.
How to sync a paperback book with a Spotify audiobook
Speaking of Amazon, Audible has been syncing audiobook listening progress with Kindle e-readers for some time now, making it easier to switch between reading and listening. Now Spotify wants to do the same, but with a more open approach. Spotify’s Page Match feature, which launches today and is expected to be available for “most English-language titles” by the end of February, will sync your audiobook listening progress on Spotify with your current position in a physical book or even an e-reader.
This works because syncing doesn’t involve an account, but rather your phone’s camera. To use Page Matching , open a supported audiobook in the Spotify app, tap Page Matching , and then tap Scan to Listen . Point the camera at the page you want to sync the audiobook to, whether it’s a page in a physical book or on an e-reader screen. You can then tap Play to start listening from where that page begins in the audiobook, or Save for Later to create a bookmark you can access at any time.
When you’re finished listening to an audiobook and want to return to a physical book or e-reader, simply open the audiobook, tap “Page Matching,” and select “Scan to Read.” Point the camera at the physical book or e-reader, and after some processing, Spotify will show you which page to turn to to continue reading where you left off.
Unlike Spotify’s audiobook summaries, Page Match claims to not use artificial intelligence , relying instead on computer vision and text matching. However, I’m curious how the Scan to Read feature will handle inconsistent page numbers across different editions of a book, which can be a significant issue, especially for ebooks. Spotify states that if the feature encounters problems, it will prompt you to try again.
The Page Match feature is available to all Spotify audiobook listeners, so you can likely try it out right now. Premium subscribers and Audiobook+ members can use it based on their monthly listening hours, while free users can use it with supported audiobooks they’ve purchased without a subscription. I’m not a Spotify subscriber and don’t own any audiobooks on the service, but the company says you just need to “make sure your Spotify app is updated” to get started.
Spotify continues to actively explore the book and podcast segments.
Spotify may have started out as a simple music streaming app, but it’s now clear the company wants to maximize time spent in its app, which means expanding its reach to all types of audio content. According to an interview with The Verge , the company saw a 36 percent increase in customers starting to listen to audiobooks on the platform and a 37 percent increase in overall audiobook listening time. This growth is believed to be primarily driven by existing customers rather than new subscribers, so it remains to be seen whether Spotify’s expanded audiobook support will dethrone Amazon. Perhaps integrating Page Match with any print books or e-readers would be a good start.