Struggling music service Guvera to relaunch
Music streaming service Guvera is set to relaunch later this month.
The portal is a free music streaming service which also offers music downloads for users who first watch advertisements.
The relaunch news comes just weeks after Goldcoast.com.au reported the Queensland-based company company had reported a $22m combined loss over the past two financial years. The company was founded by Australian-based Swede Claies Loberg in 2008 and launched its site in early 2010. In March of that year, the company appointed former MySpace national head of sales Jonathan Rogin as head of sales and said it had signed a number of key advertisers including McDonald’s, Mountain Dew and Johnson & Johnson.
In August 2011, former Virgin Music founder and EMI North America president, Phil Quartararo was appointed to helm the business. Since then the company has also struggled to find headway in the ever-expanding music streaming sector, with services like Spotify and Rdio gathering a wider footprint than others.
And the point of flogging this dead horse against Spotify is…
The investors obviously have passion and deep pockets that they don’t mind getting lighter and writing off losses as a tax deduction.
What a bunch of waffling from the PR. Sounds like The Art of Shovelling Smoke! I saw Guvera stumble into the market in 2008 when i was still in the music biz and thought there was potential but it kept tripping up. It was never able to get any traction though the promises were hyped to the max. Truth is, no one believed and who wants to watch ads to hear music?
Reading this was like having a jargon dictionary hurled at me in pieces.
Wow, what a spectacular waste of money.
“Your music, your way”
Take out music and replace with X.
Way to go, guys! Congrats on having exactly the same fucking positioning statement as EVERY SINGLE TECH/SOCIAL COMPANY OF THE LAST FEW YEARS.
never knew this service existed,
but I do recognise the logo from a t-shirt which turned up at an office I once worked in 3 years ago with no explanation.
We all thought it was a student launching a t-shirt brand.
I feel sorry for the “hundreds of Gold Coast investors” who are probably semi-retirees who still think it’s 1999 and they are riding the first dot-com boom.
So many great opinions from people that have never actually walked out of their cushy or safe agency or traditional media sales roles and followed a dream.
Guvera may remain an also ran but rdio, wearehunted , etc are exactly the same bottomless pits of money.
I can assure you this was never pitched as anything but a high risk play.
Spotify and Rdio don’t offer free downloads, Guvera does (that is unprotected MP3s). I’ve downloaded probably over 1000 songs since it launched (high quality and mine to keep forever).
As of today, it looks Guvera holds the #1 free app spot in the Music category of the App Store (Spotify #3) and is currently the #3 app in the top free charts (overall) in Australia (Google Maps is #5).
Phil Tripp, I’ve worked for the top CEO’s in the music biz (BMI, Sony Music), even to the point where I was responsible for monitoring 50% of the highest earning songwriters performance and mechanical royalties (as the central point of communication with management, etc).
Never heard of you, mate.
Nor would I expect a professional with a reputable career in the biz to say something so irrational publicly on a blog about a company that is legally partnered with all four of the biggest music labels (considering the stakeholders involved).
James, having been in the biz in your exalted places, I’m sure you have learned not to trust charts that the music biz has a history of manipulating and especially ones that measure things that are free.
Perhaps you never heard of me, but I’ve got a 40 year history in the biz, oddly enough did PR for BMI (via Ric Riccobono) and APRA here as well as major record companies (Polygram, BMG, Shock) and publishers (Warner Chappel, Alberts). Oh and for 22 years did the aUstralAsian Music Industry Directory and 19 years of the AustralAsian Music Business Conference, sponsored by Apple and the Online Music Awards sponsored by Microsoft.
Now that you gave your CV and me a few spots of mine, to your point. What i said was factual. I dealt with them in their early days. I reported on them in our music business news site and they did stumble, they did lose traction and didn’t get the four majors until late in the game. But hey, “Opinions are like anuses; everybody’s got one. Kinda the same as apps.
By the way James, being a dumb country boy from the South, but a half decent investigative journalist, I believe that you should have identified yourself as an executive with Guvera based in Robina when you wrote this stab at discrediting me.
James Forrestal if I’m correct. It took a simple call to Guvera, giving the name James formerly with BMI that confirmed your ID with the receptionist. You’re overseas now working with the venture capital firm that seems to be an offshoot. Did I guess right? Is it AMMA. From your website ” AMMA has developed and executed the entire capital raise for Guvera from a seed stage. This capital raising will continue until the listing of Guvera on the NASDAQ in 2013.” I can see why you want to discredit me!
Yes you did some time with BMI in artist relations but didn’t really see a lot in your Linked In profile http://au.linkedin.com/pub/jam.....l/7/14/257 to show that time with Sony you claim. Maybe that was before you graduated from Full Sail Recoding Institute, a music business private school.
So bud, happy to see your next post if you’re game. And more than happy to ask you a few questions if you’d like to ‘on the record’ as your ‘real identity’.
Phil
@James – are you going to declare that you used to work for Guvera (2011-2012) and now work in Private Equity, having just finished a $1MM+ placement for new investors in Guvera (Nov-Dec 2012)?
the sad thing is all this VC money has more than likely come from ignorant nan and pop investors who don’t know better via intermediaries. Irresponsible.
Actually, my auto correct made his name Forrestal, it’s Forrestel in fact. I’m wondering if the Security and Exchange Commission has any rules on this as would ASIC. Do you know James? And is this something you want to reveal in your roadshow to New Zealand investors you are talking about in your site http://ammaequity.com/boutique.....es/guvera/? I did post this thread on your Guvera Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/Guvera?fref=ts and the AMMA FB page http://www.facebook.com/ammaequity?fref=ts. Might just go viral.
You tell em Phil = think they have done enough damage already to investors pockets!!
I handled the PR with IMMEDIA! for ChaosMusic.com and Terraplanet IPOs and we were very sensitive to not taking advantage of potential investors who thought the digital music paradigm was going to be like Apple stock. We got all the money, the bubble burst and the companies went through it. But we didn’t have guilt with innocents.
The rules of promoting companies in IPOs and other offerings are very strict in regards to silent periods for PR, revealing ties adn affiliations, ethical promotion and prospectus honesty. It’s to keep the cowboys out and the process transparent.
Tripp is trippin’ out. Calm down buddy.
I’m subscribing to this thread, and Phil, would love to talk to you in private.
Great comments phil …. I also wonder how many of the accountants disclosed to their clients the bonus shares they each received as an enticement to their clients to acquire shares in guvera .
AMMA through its association with a accounting network called GPL offered the accountants that promoted and sold the guvera oppurtunity to their data base significant bonus shares for high volume sold to their clients
I bet ASIC would be interested in looking at this process as well.
Sure 041 22 666 77 any time after 11 am tomorrow or 11 am Monday/
im confused with the current free app music streaming model? Can you really make enough money using google ads in the app to cover all of the music royalty costs?
done some research. Guvera will earn about 50 cents per user per month at best from running Google ads. lots of variables but thats what my expert contact at an ad agency thinks. so does anyone know what it costs per song or per stream for the royalties? can’t see how the artist earns anything here myself?
Not only the royalties what about the wage bills , business class airfares , 5 star accommodation bills funding directors travel all over the world .apparently burning investors cash at approx $600k per month yes that is $600,000 per month
wow $600k a month! does anyone know what revenue they make a month? found out something else from a contact yesterday who works for a major music company. she told me that you dont pay per stream for music consumed on a mobile device, apparently you pay the record companies a monthly set fee per user, so even if a consumer only listens to one song it would still cost Guevara around $6 to the record companies. so assuming a user costs $6 a month and they are only earning $0.50 cents per user a month using Google advertising then they are loosing $5.50 per month per user!!! unless there is another revenue stream here?
It seems to me like an act of desperation from guvera. Offer a free mobile music service, which of course is great for consumers, but with no real business model behind it; attract heaps of mobile users using the service so that you have some ‘allegedly’ good news to raise more investment capital. I wonder though if the investors realise each new users is essentially just burning more of their hard earned? If my contact is correct then these 1000’s of new guvera app users joining each day is costing them $6 for every user in record company costs!! So it wont take long for them to go through another $1 million! In fact around 6 weeks if my math is accurate based on the current number of new users attracted t the app service each day.
I wonder if James of Guvera wants to comment on this. He seems to have skedaddled from this thread but is in NewZealand doing an investor presentation Monday. You could post this question on the Guvera and AMMA Personal equity FB pages. They banned me.
Phil, yes it would be an interesting question for existing or new investors to raise. Apparently for music sold on web the companies selling the music pay per song download or per individual stream, but for mobile there is only monthly subscriptions available from the music companies that can be resold. You may know more Phil being an industry guy? Therefore guvera is taking a huge risk here with this model. Will they be able to cover $6 a month from advertising revenue for each individual user each month? My agency contact reckons not a chance in hell and they would be lucky to attract $1 per month per user in advertising revenue even from big major brands. Will they just switch to charging users when they have a larger user base? Based on there PR comments and marketing; no. They will keep it free for consumers always as that’s what Guvera is about. I think you have put James in his place Phil and doubt he will be on here ever again.