Spotify said on Thursday it will begin selling physical books directly through its app under a new partnership with Bookshop.org, marking an unexpected move beyond its core music and audiobook offerings. The expansion comes as Spotify looks to differentiate its platform and compete more aggressively with rivals such as Apple and Amazon.
The physical book purchasing feature will roll out later this spring for users in the United States and the United Kingdom. Bookshop.org will manage pricing, inventory and fulfillment, while Spotify will integrate discovery and purchasing into its app experience.
Spotify has been steadily building out its audiobook business since launching Audiobooks in Premium two years ago. The service is now available in 22 markets, with an English-language catalogue exceeding 500,000 titles. The company said new audiobook listeners are up 36%, while listening hours have increased 37%, highlighting growing engagement despite intense competition in audio content.
The move into physical books comes at a challenging time for traditional publishing. Sales of printed books have slowed as readers increasingly shift to digital formats. Last year, News Corp, owner of publisher HarperCollins, warned that book orders were weakening, while long-standing distributor Baker & Taylor shut down operations earlier this year.
Alongside book sales, Spotify is introducing a new feature called “Page Match,” designed to bridge reading and listening. The tool allows users to scan a page from a physical book or e-book with their phone camera and jump to the corresponding point in the audiobook, then scan again later to resume reading from the exact spot. Page Match will launch with most English-language titles and is expected to be fully available to all audiobook users by late February.
Spotify has also raised the price of its monthly premium subscription by $1 to $12.99 in select markets, including the United States, Estonia and Latvia, as it continues to invest in new features and content formats.