Type of site Music, Entertainment Industry Music | Available in 4 Website guvera.com | |
Headquarters Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia Founder(s) Claes Loberg, Brad Christiansen, Darren Herft | ||
Guvera [Closed to USA market 2016] is an online music and entertainment streaming service founded in 2008. Guvera is available on web browsers, iOS, Android and the Windows Phone. Guvera has agreements with the music labels in the regions where the product is available, which allows for legal free music streams.
Contents
Music streaming
Guvera streams music and entertainment for its users and has signed licensing agreements with Universal Music Group, EMI, Orchard, INgrooves, IODA, Mushroom/Liberation, Shock Records, Believe Digital; in addition to the rights bodies APRA, AMCOS, BMI, RightsFlow, Acodem, SESAC, Cash, Emmasacm, Extraphone, Peer, Prs/Impel, Filscap, First Music Publishing, Latinautor, Macp, Megaliner, National Music Publishing, Sabam, Sadaic, Sba, Sacem, Siae, Socan, Sonyatv, Sesac, Sgae, Solar, Warner Chappell, Universal Music Publishing, and Unisys. Guvera distributes DRM-free MP3 downloads with bitrates of 256 and 320 kbit/s. Guvera is also a targeted advertising platform, which targets ads at relevant music genres. Content can be streamed via brand channels from within Guvera's platform, and the advertisers have a role in the selecting music content.
History
Guvera was initially funded by AMMA Private Investment out of Australia. Guvera raised about $50m from its base of about 1000 smaller sophisticated investors primarily made up of accounting firms and other financial services businesses. Guvera was incorporated in 2008, and launched beta in Australia February 2010, and in the US March, 2010. Guvera was initially released as a beta to a select group of users by invitation only.
On August 2011, Guvera appointed Phil Quartararo as its Global Head of Music. In September 2011 Guvera moved into new headquarters in The Rocket in Robina, Gold Coast, Australia. In March 2012, Guvera created a mobile platform and in December 2012, Guvera released mobile apps for IOS and Android in Australia. An iPad app was then released in August 2013. In March 2014, Guvera signed an agreement with Lenovo to become its worldwide music partner, with Guvera's music streaming service pre-installed onto Lenovo mobile devices.
In January 2015 Guvera acquired Blinkbox Music from Tesco. It placed the company into administration in June 2015, having exhausted Blinkbox's financial reserves. The company had bought Blinkbox Music as part of an agreement with Tesco that it would pay its employees a higher rate of redundancy payment if the business failed, which it did not honour. In 2015 the company received a Gold award at Asia App Design Awards.
In October 2015 the former employees of Blinkbox Music filed a £10m class action lawsuit against Guvera.
In May 2016 Guvera won an international Gold at the Global App Design Awards.
In June 2016 Guvera was blocked from a stockmarket listing.
Guvera began operating in only 5 markets: Australia, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and in July 2016, Darren Herft stepped down as CEO and co-founder Claes Loberg stepped into the position.
On 27 July 2016, the company shut down its operations in its home market of Australia and reiterated its intentions to "focus all efforts in key emerging countries, such as India and Indonesia".