• by Sara Guaglione , December 1, 2015

Co-founder and CEO Matthew Hammett said he wants his new venture to be the “Spotify or Netflix for magazines.”

Readbug’s aggregated digitized magazine content is read by “creative and curious” types, Hammett said, like East London hipsters.
The app’s description on iTunes says Readbug is made up of “the best independent, classic, cult and award-winning magazines from around the world.”

Readbug has around 9,000 downloads so far, but only one review on iTunes -- and it gave the app just a 1-star rating.

Hammett, who was previously a designer at media company Future plc and co-founder of Skint magazine, told TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas that Readbug is deliberately “handpicking and curating” the titles it wants to repackage and distribute on its platform in order to establish its own editorial voice.

“There’s got to be a better distribution model for digital content, for a digital magazine,” Hammett said.

Readbug runs content in the Article Stream feature, which functions much like a newsfeed of individual popular articles from all magazines offered. Content in the Article Stream is presented in native digital formatting.

The Magazine Stack is where whole issues of magazines can be found, including current and back issues. ReadBug offers an all-you-can-read subscription service for its selected magazine titles for £9.99 a month or £4.99 for students, in the U.K.

Users can choose from eight categories, including food, music, visual arts and design to get relevant content pushed to them in the Article Stream.  Aside from a seven-day free trial, there’s no freemium element. But the plan is to add a free selection of channels curated by the staff.

Readbug’s pitch is that it wants to help indie publishers increase their digital reach.

“Part of the conversation [with publishers] is look, we’re not trying to replace print, we’re trying to open it up to a digital market,” Hammett told TechCrunch.

“We convert all our content, so it’s mobile friendly… We’re adding a buy-it-now function so the reader can — at the end of an article or a magazine — decide to purchase the magazine there and then,” he added.

Reader revenue is divided between Readbug and its publishing partners, with a 30/70 share.

The app currently offers 50 titles — including Dazed, Under the Radar, Huck and Makeshift — with an additional 10 ready to be added shortly.

Hammett says Readbug is aiming to have expanded to 125 titles by this time next year.