Feb 5 (Reuters) - Spotify said on Thursday it will begin selling physical books on its streaming platform through a partnership with online retailer Bookshop.org, marking an unexpected expansion beyond its audiobooks business.
The company is doubling down on new features to better compete with rival streaming services from tech giants such as Apple and Amazon.
Since launching audiobooks two years ago, Audiobooks in Premium has expanded to 22 global markets and its English‑language catalog has grown
to more than 500,000 titles, Spotify said. Its new listeners are up 36% and listening hours have grown 37%, it added.
The physical book purchasing feature will begin rolling out later this spring for users in the U.S. and the UK, with Bookshop.org handling pricing, inventory and fulfillment, Spotify said.
Spotify's move comes at a time when physical book sales are sluggish because more users are increasingly turning to e-books and other sources on the Internet.
News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, said last year book publishing orders were slowing from both readers and retailers. A nearly 200-year-old library book distributor Baker & Taylor also shut down operations in January.
Spotify said it will launch "Page Match," a tool designed to let readers move between reading and listening.
Users can scan a page from a printed book or e-book using the Spotify app's camera to jump to the corresponding moment in the audiobook and scan again later to find the exact passage where they should resume reading, the company said.
Page Match will be available at launch on most English-language titles, with plans to be fully rolled out to all audiobook users by February 23, the company said.
Spotify has also increased the price of its monthly premium subscription plan by $1 to $12.99 in the United States, Estonia and Latvia markets.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru)
