The king of playlists and podcasts is now taking a run at print.
Driving the news: Following the success of its audiobook business, Spotify will start selling hardcover and paperback books this spring, putting it in direct competition with major booksellers — most prominently, Amazon.
In addition to selling books directly on its app, the music streamer will roll out a feature called Page Match that lets users scan a page from a physical book to instantly jump to that same spot in the audiobook and vice versa. Pretty neat!
Why it’s happening: Since it got into the audiobook game a couple of years ago, Spotify has been quietly killing it. Its audiobook listeners were up 36% last year compared to 2024, and over half of its 281 million premium subscribers have listened to an audiobook.
The CEO of Bookshop.org, the group that Spotify is partnering with to distribute the books, says more people want physical copies and audiobooks so that they can listen in the car on their morning commute and then read their hard copy at home.
Why it matters: In the age of endless scrolling, more people are turning to books as a screen-time antidote. Gen Zers in particular have embraced the digital detox of books to the point where they have suddenly become — dare we say it — trendy.
Zoom out: Books are part of a broader trend of young people romanticizing all things analogue, from record players to knitting to jigsaw puzzles. Basically, all the things people used to do for fun before smartphones are back in style.—LA