Australian music streaming business Guvera has launched in India. Guvera founder and chief executive Darren Herft has said the company will use the same advertising funded model that it uses in Australia. Clients in India already include Harley Davidison, Bose and Nikon.
Speaking at a Guvera event yesterday, Herft said consumers are increasingly demanding free access to music rather than paying monthly subscriptions.
“In 2000, the music industry turned over US$36 billion, last year it was $16 billion, so it has gone backwards by $US20 billion despite people consuming more music than ever before,” he said. “That drop is largely because people want to access music for free and Guvera is about giving consumers what they want, so let’s provide them with a business model that gives them what they want.”
While Guvera was initially built for the web, the focus was now on an ad funded mobile model, he said.
Herft said the native ad format will create greater engagement for brands with consumers “in as non disruptive a fashion as possible so it doesn’t annoy users”.
“Users will be happy to engage with brands because things aren’t being forced upon them,” he said.
Head of product Robb Snell said the format will provide brands with ads tailored for mobile, something many advertisers have struggled with.
“Brands want to look good on mobile but they are not getting that at the moment,” he said. “So far their experience in the digital landscape has been pretty limited on that front. As soon as they step off their own website they have little control to make sure they look fantastic so that is what we are trying to do for the brand.”
The format will mean users are not “hijacked”, Snell said, claiming that consumers are 30 times more likely to engage with a native placement over a display ad.
Guvera launched in Australia and the US in 2010, and introduced a mobile platform two years later. In March this year, Guvera struck a deal with Lenovo to become the Chinese computing giant’s worldwide music partner, with Guvera pre-installed onto Lenovo mobile devices.
