• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 12, 2016

It turns out putting on clothes can open a lot of doors.

Playboy, long too risqué for easily-shocked tech platforms, will soon be available at both Apple’s iTunes Store and Google Play, thanks to its well-publicized decision to drop nudity in its print and digital products beginning in 2014.

The move to boost digital Playboy’s distribution is just the latest step in the publication’s reinvention as a “safe for work” young men’s lifestyle brand.

According to publisher Playboy Enterprises, readers can get a single issue of the digital version of the magazine for $5.99, or buy a yearlong subscription for $17.99, compatible with both iOS and Android devices. The magazine’s digital versions are produced with the ZinioPro publishing platform.

The Playboy Web site relaunched without photos of naked women back in 2014, followed by the print magazine, which dropped nudity in March of this year. Following these moves, the brand has enjoyed explosive digital growth, fueled by lifestyle content spanning consumer technology, food, drink, music, culture and nightlife. 

That includes 5 million new social-media followers; the average age of visitors to the site fell from 47 to 30.5, according to CEO Philip Morelock.

It’s worth noting that the magazine has hardly banished beautiful women from its pages or online presence. They are still there, just wearing bikinis or otherwise (minimally) covered up.

Some of the brand’s other offerings include Playboy Now, offering additional content for Web site visitors, and Playboy Classics, drawing a variety of safe-for-work content from the publisher’s archives.

The decision to drop nudity has cleared the way for other firsts for Playboy in recent months. The brand held its first “Newfront” presentation in May, signaling its arrival in the mainstream consumer advertising marketplace.