Essentially the only way to get downloads right now is by accessing their Facebook page with a “mini-Guvera”, you say you like them etc and get about 3 downloads a week. All fine and dandy for the user (a free album each month) but not for the site itself or advertisers. To get your 3 tracks there is virtually no brand exposure, the supposed whole point of this thing to begin with.

I can’t comment on the offers aspect done through small businesses, I don’t live where they are currently offered. (This would seem to be a potential gold mine; get music cards into 50,000 businesses, even $100 worth of cards a month and you generate over a million a week).

But just at the moment Guvera seems like the nerdy kid that gets the cool kids to hang out with them by giving them stuff. They like to throw these extravagant parties (as shown on their FB profile) where industry types and muso’s come. Until the booze runs out.

A direct quote from a Billboard story on the event “After the painful realization that there was no more Grey Goose to consume, the crowd thinned”.

Free music, advertisers connect with their audience and artists get their cut. Shouldn’t this thing be killing it?

http://www.reverbnation.com/

1. Their traffic ranking is terrible. Have a look at Alexa.com and compare them to, say, Spotify and Grooveshark. Raising money with NO traffic? Hmmmm hard.

2. They’re now repositioning themselves as ‘social media’ – full page advert in the Courier Mail (around $16k) – and doing TRAINING sessions for SMES on how to use social media for their business. WTF?

3. In the last week there has been 15 mentions of Guvera on Twitter. 8 of those were Guvera themselves.

4. I draw attention to this comment: “I think the reason Guvera hasn’t taken off in the last couple of years is that the focus has been on improving the technology of the website, and making it more user-friendly (which is slowly happening)”

Anyone smell a MySpace? In this day and age, the one thing you don’t have, is time. Incidentally, MySpace still has significantly more visitors than Guvera does.

As a standalone model, it’s sound. In a competitive market, its buggered.

Apparantly they will be around for a bit longer according to my sources they have just secured up to $20 mill in funds to help fund the current losses and future development, they are not making money at this point but they have their eye on the bigger picture with a list within 12-24 months where they hope to cash in on the big buck…sound like the goold ole dot com days !!

I got a call from my accountant trying to promote and sell further shares in this..apparantly for every share sold they pick up bonus shares as an incentive….if it succeeds a big win and so if it fails they suffer no loss.Unethical to say the least.

I stand by the original model being dead in the water but if they’re reacting to the market by changing their business model, good on them.

The new version of the site is a vast improvement. Profile tedium aside, the live search and stream-while-navigating features make it a breeze.

I was using Pandora (expat Aussie in Ohio) and found I was skipping lots of songs, regardless of the station, which you can only do a certain amount of times. Plus, there are ads to sit through. I find the fact that Guvera is fully customisable and ad-free to be a couple of its biggest positives. They do need to get their app out ASAP though, if you’re not mobile these days you’re dead.

On the advertising side the deals page is growing quite rapidly. NYC is the only market at present over here but its gone from only a small handful of businesses to well over 200 in a couple of weeks. By the sounds this is happening in Australia too. I’m heading to New York in September and may try one of the places listed to get a music card – I assume it works like an iTunes prepaid thing.

I’ve read online they expect to be profitable by year’s end and are looking to expand to Europe early 2012. This, of course could be more of the spin you mentioned, I guess time will tell.

Lets get real here, how is this really going to encourage someone to shop at a particular store and who is really paying for that?, in the current economic climate it is hard enough to get the people to spend their money let alone run around town to source a store that will provide you with a $10 music credit.

I bet as a music lover you are going to run down to ‘platinum pool and spa services” or ‘Duffy down under boat hire” just to name a few on their site just so you can obtain a $10 music credit with Guvera….yeah and thats going to happen!!!!!!!

The consumers of music are not idiots they may have initially fallen for the catch phrase ‘FREE MUSIC WHILST THE ARTIST GET PAID”, however that good intention will not extend to shopping loyalty at selective stores not when there are so many other means of downloading free music without leaving your home. In 12 months time I would like to approach one of these businesses and ask how much new business was generated by the Guvera cards ??? I think I already know the answer to that.

Lets face it the first thing they have to do is drive traffic to the site for this approach to be even remotely successful and they aint got the marketing budget for that unless they can sell the concept to angel investors AGAIN!!!!

They are MANAGING THIS ON THE RUN and jumping from one model to the next desperately trying to find a solution and sorry to say I dont think there is one.

I attended the investor meeting. While I agree that there was a great amount of positive spin being put on absolutely everything, and I would be somewhat reluctant to invest a great deal of money into the business, I feel that progress is steadily being made.

They are not bankrupt or close to it, and advertisers and SME’s are continuing to support the business. An app is being launched in the near future too.

The focus seems to have shifted a great deal from downloads and credits to streaming, as well as ‘earning’ credits from local businesses and through social networking.

I think the reason Guvera hasn’t taken off in the last couple of years is that the focus has been on improving the technology of the website, and making it more user-friendly (which is slowly happening). The focus still seems to be mainly on the US market, although advertising is properly starting in Australia.

Also – the balance between numbers of advertisers and users seems hard to find, but I believe that when there are more numbers and a better balance – there is real potential.

While it seems it will still take a fair amount of time, I think the final product may be worth the wait : )

My comments are not about the product but more about the business model and practices behind the scenes.
Unfortunately I could not attend and I am waiting on feedback from a friend who attended, I am happy to post when I get that.

My experience in dealing with these guys is that they put a positive spin on most everything they have marketing backgrounds and you can tell, so you need to be careful. I know that they are coming under pressure from existing investors and next monday they are having another meeting to discuss Shareholders options.

I cant understand why someone would keep pumping money into this with all the behind the scenes issues that exist…once again great marketing I would suggest . These guys are living day by day and relying on Angel investors.

I do know that some of the advisors that sold the concept to mum and dad ivestors were given incentives to sell guvera in the way of free shares, the more they sold the more free shares they were given a marketing ploy I was not told about this and found out later.

The people involved and these advisors all have very little hurt money invested if any. I think these guys would be looking at a quick exit and sale to at least get something out of ,something for nothing, not bad eh!!!, leaving the small investors like me and others carrying a loss.

I will keep you informed because if that happens the preverbial will hit the fan.

There are a couple of interesting paradoxes here
1) Angel investors still appear willing to pump cash into this thing, whilst (as John mentions) user #’s seem to stagnate. Are they seeing something that outsiders aren’t?

2) Guvera may look to traditional advertising methods to generate buzz about their product; the very methods that they claim (rightly or wrongly) to be dead/dying.

As I mentioned above I am a regular user of the site, have downloaded scores of tracks and stream frequently. I can also see enormous potential if/when a mobile app becomes available. Investors like yourself must be frustrated that despite updates and improvements it “keeps hanging around” rather than flourishing. Did they provide any reason for optimism?

and here is a snippet of why ozsoapbox was right

Going Concern

The auditor has issued a qualified audit opinion, highlighting that there is significant doubt on the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.

This is set out in the Independent Auditor’s Report and must be read in full. If the Company cannot continue as a going concern, any investment by a Shareholder in the Company could be of no value

Mind you I have given it a go and simply loaded it with crap to get a few feebies and I bet you there are plenty doing that.I wonder how long it will be before the advertisers wake up that the info they are getting is rubbish?.

I note also that Apple, google, Amazon are in the process of launching Cloud music …seems a much better solution to me,,also spotify is launching in the US shortly…Big Players with deep pockets.

I wish them luck but I cant see how they will able to compete with big players especially when you need to hand over your private info to get a song.

Very interesting reading the blog as to the advantages and disadvantages oif this site,and we may be debating something that will not be around to much longer anyway.

The bottom line is that this model has to work financially for it to be a successful and to date based on my research, as I am an investor, they have pumped significant monies into this and based on last financial reports they were churning through $700K per month in fixed costs and auditors and chairman were qualifying their reports managing expectations for a failure…

I am keen to get the latest Financial results . Advertisers are not coming on board and nor are subscribers in the anticipated numbers and now even more competitors entering this space. Unfortubately I am not sure under any business model how this can lead to anything more than tears for all concerned.

They have just released an invitation to an investors night next week where they will specifically talk about exit strategies for investors …basically it seems grab what they can now and cut losses …jump off a sinking ship…wait and see.

Maccas:
I’m sorry – you are right.
Many apologies.

And thank you for being man enough to admit that your posting was totally out of order.

Enjoy your day.

Maccas: I don’t understand the point of him even having a “discussion” page, when any other point of view posted is shot down.

You obviously don’t understand exactly what a “blog” is for instance.

A blog is a site wherein a person broadcasts their own opinions on the world and the facts, fallacies and foibles that make up its continuum. And anybody — including fucktards such as yourself — can post their own opinions, regardless of how stupid or irrelevant they are.

In fact, it’s quite laughable that you seem to think that you have some “right” to dictate to Oz what he should or shouldn’t be saying on his own blog.

If you don’t like Oz’s style, or (apparently) disagree so vehemently with his opinions and thoughts on life, then why are you bothering to post insults here? Why not instead post something at least a little bit imaginative or constructive? Or do you crack a big woody while you’re insulting someone from behind the safety of your keyboard?

Pathetic.

Ozsoapbox will rebut any comment posted here.

Any comment posted that I disagree with, sure. Why wouldn’t I?

That’s not a discussion Ozsoapbox. That’s just your narrow mindedness.

I wasn’t aware you held the eclusive definition of what a discussion was. I always thought it was the conversation that occurred between two or more people.

All I can hear is a whole lot of blubbering like a school girl, ‘waaaah you don’t agree with me, you’re narrow minded!’

Next.

So to anyone thinking of posting a message here. don’t even bother cause you’re already wrong. Ozsoapbox will tell you himself!

And Ozsoapbox. Open your mind a bit mate. I can’t imagine you’d have many friends with an attitude like yours. Just because it’s your opinion, doesn’t mean it’s the right one all the time.

Ohhh, and I’m looking forward to you telling me how “wrong” my post is too. This should be a good one.