Guvera has quietly launched in Indonesia this past week. The Australian music streaming service was relaunched in Australia and the US on 16 October and apparently was made available in Indonesia as well. Unlike in Australia however, Guvera requires an almost immediate subscription service in Indonesia.
While Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, iTunes Radio, and other online music streaming services may still be circling the Indonesian waters, the Gold Coast and Sydney-based company struck a deal with local mobile services company Skybee to run its business in Indonesia. We have contacted Skybee for further details of the cooperation and will report back once they’ve responded.
Neither Guvera nor Skybee have yet to officially make a public announcement regarding its Indonesian launch and the Guvera.co.id address still say it’s coming soon, but Indonesians can already access the site and register to the service on Guvera’s global site, which unfortunately requires you to have Flash installed for some reason. You can use Chrome, which has its own Flash plugin, to access Guvera if you do not wish to install Flash separately. Guvera will also be launching its mobile site in the near future.
Guvera offers nearly 10 million songs to stream with an option to download tracks. Australian site Music Feeds noted in August that the company had added seven million more tracks to quadruple its library as it was preparing for the reboot.
In Australia Guvera offers a freemium service, allowing music listeners to stream its entire library at any time at no cost from their mobile devices. Australians have an option to pay AUD 11.99 per month to gain access to downloads, desktop streaming, and remove ads. The company streams music in 64 kbps high definition AAC format but offers higher bit rates for downloaded songs.
In Indonesia, the service gives music fans who register to the service a trial period of five days of unmetered music streaming before Guvera asks you to subscribe to the service. Without registering, the songs are limited to 30 seconds each. For fans of Indonesian music, the service has a large number of local artists and songs already featured and available. There are even playlists made by the local team as well.
In terms of interface, the service is highly reminiscent of the early days of Ohdio but its mood-based and curated playlist service goes directly head to head with Ohdio’s current service.
Guvera General Manager Scott Hamilton told Cnet Australia last week that the service has had 675,000 registered members to date. “What we’ve seen is a very high uptake of the ad-funded product”, Hamilton told Cnet Australia. “That demonstrates that users do want to consume music but they don’t want to pay for it. They want to consume music online and have brands pay for their engagement … at the moment, we have 675,000 people registered on the service, actively each month we have in excess of 200,000 people using the product in the ad-funded model”.
Music Feeds in February mentioned that Guvera had half a million members at that time with an aim to reach one million by the end of this year. Given that it has only managed to add 175,000 since then, to reach its target it will have to experience a massive sign up between now and New Year’s Eve, although its recent relaunch with a revamped mobile apps and website may be a good catalyst for that.
