A Conversation With Claes Loberg, CEO of Australian music service Guvera
An interview originally conducted for The Vine that I published in full at Waycooljnr, the Australian music and marketing blog which I recently began editing in place of founder Nick Crocker:
Q+A with Claes Loberg, CEO of Australian music service Guvera
Australia-based online service Guvera (http://guvera.com) has been making waves among the music industry recently. It offers free high quality (256kbps) downloads to consumers, which are paid for by advertisers who can match particular artists to their brand’s ‘personality’. As you can see by the image to the right, Guvera is not particularly subtle when it comes to marketing.
Waycooljnr editor Andrew McMillen spoke with Guvera CEO Claes Loberg a few days ahead of its worldwide public launch on March 30, 2010.
Andrew: Hey Claes. Can you summarise what Guvera’s all about?
Claes: Here’s the gist of it: advertisers paying for downloads. There’s nothing new about the idea of advertisers actually paying for content. That’s how we’ve been receiving TV for free for all these years. What’s wrong with television at the moment, is that advertising is actually starting to lose value year, on year. People have got the power to click past it, sort of get around the advertising. That’s a reflection of all advertising across the board.
Now that the people are in control, Guvera’s business model is a reversal of the advertising process. Instead of advertisers being the annoying thing they used to be years ago, now they can be a channel that people will want to go to, to get content. It’s trying to change the value proposition away from ads-as-disruptors. It actually pays the artists for the content it’s created, and the people still get it for free.
Full interview over at Waycooljnr.