All posts tagged claes-loberg

  • April 8, 2010

    Mess+Noise story: ‘Guvera Road Test’, April 2010

    Contiki channel on music service GuveraFollowing my interview with Claes Loberg – CEO of new free, advertiser-funded online music service Guvera – for The Vine, Mess+Noise asked me to ‘road test’ the site. I also enlisted the assistance of Ian Rogers from Brisbane doom rock trio No Anchor, and Melbourne electronic artist Faux Pas (Tim Shiel).

    Road Test: Guvera

    A new service called Guvera promises free music in exchange for being willfully marketed to, but is it really the solution to illegal downloading? ANDREW MCMILLEN finds out.

    Guvera is a new online music service. It offers free downloads to consumers in exchange for the “pleasure” of being blatantly marketed to throughout the entire experience. Here’s how it works: instead of interrupting people with annoying ads, potential advertisers can inhabit a personalised channel that people will voluntarily visit (or, more accurately, tolerate) in exchange for 256kbps MP3s of their favourite artists. CEO Claes Loberg describes this as a “reversal of the advertising process”.

    The site launched on March 30 to widespread media fanfare including a spot on A Current Affair, whose audience might not have been aware that “the internet is the electronic equivalent of going to a record store”, as one of the show’s talking heads revealed. However, Loberg admits they’re targeting those who currently obtain music illegally.

    Guvera homepage“The reality is that the people who want to use those [illegal] services still can,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is implement a service that creates an option for the music industry to try and monetise the free stuff that everybody’s already getting, by getting advertisers to pay for it.”

    In theory, it’s an admirable endeavour. But how does the service rate in terms of usability and practicality?

    Full story over at Mess+Noise.

    2 Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing /

  • March 29, 2010

    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:

    A Guvera advertisement suggesting intercourse with piratesQ+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.

    1 Comment / Conversations /