Spotify has officially announced the launch of a new feature called Page Match, after it was revealed in a report last month, to provide an intelligent experience that allows progress to be synchronized between audiobooks, paper books, and e-books seamlessly.
The feature works in a simple way; The user opens the audiobook within the Spotify application, then presses the Page Match button and chooses the Scan to listen option while allowing the application to use the camera.
It then takes a photo of the current page of the paper or e-book, and the app matches it to the corresponding position in the audiobook. Spotify then offers two options: follow directly from the same spot or save it for later reference.
In the opposite direction, the feature allows you to transition from listening to reading easily. The user opens the audiobook, clicks on Page Match, then chooses Scan to read and scans any page from the book.
Then, the application determines the correct place where listening stopped, and directs the reader to the appropriate page, either moving forward or backward, to continue reading from the same point.
The Page Match feature is scheduled to be available to audiobook listeners on iOS and Android by the end of this month, for most titles available in English.
In a related context, Spotify also revealed the availability of purchasing paper books directly from within the application for users of the United States and the United Kingdom, through a partnership with the Bookshop.org platform, which supports independent bookstores.
