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January 13, 2020updated 30 Sep 2022 8:48am

Tech and women’s mags top most-read titles on digital subscription service Readly in 2019

By Charlotte Tobitt

Tech and women’s magazines were the most-read titles on digital subscription app Readly in 2019, it has revealed.

Tech magazine T3 was the most-read title and had the single most-read issue in the UK last year.

The top five also included tech magazine Stuff, Good Housekeeping, Woman and Home, and Hello.

The app has been dubbed the “Spotify for magazines” because it allows users to access some 4,500 UK and international titles for a monthly fee.

A Readly spokesperson declined to share its subscriber numbers, but revealed 12.6m issues were read on its platform in 2019.

Future-owned T3’s annual “101 gadgets you can’t live without” list, published in August, became Readly’s most popular issue of the year.

The top ten most-read magazines on Readly for 2019 is as follows (scroll down for front covers):

  1. T3: 101 gadgets you can’t live without
  2. Stuff: Smarter home living
  3. Women’s Health: The naked issue
  4. iPad User Magazine: Best free iPad apps
  5. Hello: Welcome to the world little Archie
  6. Cosmopolitan: The making of Dani Dyer and are we all adulter-ish?
  7. Good Housekeeping: Fern Britton ‘I’m ready for new adventures’
  8. Delicious: Easy one pots, 100 recipes you’ll love forever bookazine
  9. GQ: World Exclusive with Robert De Niro
  10. Men’s Health: fit at any age

Readly said the list showed an appetite for technology, health, celebrities – including the royals – and “lists for efficient, smarter living”.

Its UK managing director and chief content officer Ranj Begley suggested the choices of magazine could have been influenced by Brexit and other long-running news stories.

“It’s been a year of anticipation for the nation,” he said.

“In periods like this, our readers tend to focus on personal interests, hobbies and celebrities. The issues which have caught the imagination of our readers tend to fuel a passion or offer a form of inspiration, education or escapism.”

The most popular international titles with UK readers were Playboy, Maxim, Easy Food, The Week, and Men’s Journal.

Not all UK magazines are signed up to Readly, with current affairs titles like The Economist, Private Eye, The Spectator, New Statesman and Prospect missing from its roster.

Readly faced fresh competition in the digital subscription market last year with the launch of Apple News Plus, which includes Empire magazine.

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