Readbug: Spotify for binge readers

"It feels like free." Matthew Hammett is espousing endlessly streaming music from Spotify and binge-watching House of Cards on Netflix. As co-founder of publishing start-up Readbug, it's an idea he's keen to apply to the magazine rack .

It’s not like the all-you-can-eat buffet, a tempting mirage that leaves you bloated on greasy food without a sense of satisfaction. Instead, the internet-age business model has transformed both the music and film industry by giving consumers what they want, when they want, for modest monthly payments.

Transformation is what Hammett and his co-founders are aiming for with London-based Readbug. They’re looking to change the way we read with a platform they dub “Spotify for magazines”.

It’s a similar model: unlimited access to hundreds of magazines with a monthly payment of £9.95 (€12.60) and offline mode and the addition of a Flipboard-type presentation, giving personalised recommendations for individual magazine articles.

Punters are used to this model when consuming music and TV shows, of course, but it’s not the status quo for reading. Amazon Unlimited hasn’t yet made all-you-can- read as mainstream as it would like, and consumers haven’t warmed to the digital facsimile.

“What happened with magazines is that Apple came along and released Newsstand and said it was going to be the saviour of the magazine industry,” says Hammett. “Publishers bought into it and thought we can just do a magazine replica in PDF and sell it at the same price and people can read it on an iPad.

“What has actually happened is that the consumer is reluctant to spend €4.99 before they’ve even started engaging with the PDF content.”

Spotify and other had an easier task because the bottom fell out of the music industry overnight and piracy “kind of forced the hand of the record companies”, he says.

“But publishers are slowly realising that they have to react soon; otherwise they’re going to have to start closing doors. It’s perfect timing for us; there are proven models in music and film, so it’s only a matter of time before magazines are the next one. The question is, what is the platform that really chimes with the consumer? That’s what we want Readbug to be.”

Product required

The model requires a plentiful supply of magazines to tempt a user base, but Readbug already has several big names on board, including

Haymarket

and

Bauer Media

, as well as some distribution houses and publishers of independent magazines. “We’re in conversation with all of the other major UK publishers,” says Hammett.

“It’s a matter of assuring publishers they can get decent return compared with what are currently comparatively small download figures on their digital replicas. This has been the hardest aspect because, naturally, big organisations are quite conservative in their approach to new ideas.”

“It’s not just that but breaking through the bureaucracy. We pitched to dozens of people within each of these publishing houses. If the individual loves it they have to go and tell the person above them and inform people below them, then go back in and pitch to the editorial team and then on the board of directors. And it just goes on and on.”

Nothing overnight

Hammett hasn’t gotten to the point where he’s sleeping on the doorsteps of potential investors, as Spotify chief executive

Daniel Ek

reputedly did on one occasion. Still, it’s been a case of relentless phone calls and emails to talk to the right people.

“Naturally this is going to take time,” he says. “The publishing industry want to explore the full business model and try and get their heads around it. But even the companies that we currently don’t have on board – the really big guys – they’ve looked at what we’ve built so far and the response so far has been ‘wow’. They think it’s great.

“I’m super-confident we can get all the best content on there shortly after launch.”

The other hard sell is, of course, the consumer. All-you-can-eat is great, but a whole internet of free reading is better. Readbug isn’t competing with the physical printed magazine so much as an endless stream of free web content.

“We have to convince consumers that they want to buy into premium content instead of what they can get online for free. It’s about curated content and curated design. This is the future of the magazine, because it will only exist in digital.”

The magazine on your newsagent’s shelf is “a dying medium,” states Hammett, and he is betting that the wisdom of the crowd will also decide on this line of thinking. An early Readbug decision was to pursue crowd-funding in order to drive app development, choosing UK-based equity crowd-funding platform Seedrs.

The first round meant that the iOS platform could be developed. The second one, which has just kicked off, is aimed at Android, Windows Phone and additional functionality for wearables.

“As amazing as it was to raise £75k in four days [in the first round], that doesn’t buy you a lot of apps,” he says. “We plan to roll Android out as soon as possible. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going with funding.”

Hammett adds, with a grin: "This is top secret. But between you, me and The Irish Times readers, we're almost there."