So how many music streaming services do we really need here in Malaysia? Guess Spotify and Deezer isn’t enough as now a new competitor has entered our shores to stream sweet, sweet music to our PCs, phones and tablets.
So who is this new player? The name’s Guvera and they’re based out of Australia with the service offered in multiple other countries. Now they’ve set their eyes on Malaysia.
In a market with Spotify and Deezer as players however, just how is Guvera going to set themselves apart from the competition you might ask? Well, there’s a few ways one of them includes the support of local content. Guvera is in the midst of reaching out to the local music community to grow the local music catalogue and they’ve also created specialised playlists that feature local Malaysian artist like Joe Flizzow, SonaOne, Altimet and Faizal Tahir, just to name a few. However according to Guvera, the support doesn’t just limits itself to music promotion either. They intend to go beyond just music marketing, intending to work closely with local music artist and music makers that may even extend to on ground promotions and more.
So that’s great for our local artists, but how about users and listeners here? What do we get that differs from the other music streaming services out there? There’s Guvera’s unique feature that allows users to tailor their music based on their current mood, activity or preference by searching for music using hashtags. That’s not all though, Guvera also rewards users with offers and what they call “money-cannot-buy experiences” from their music partners. What this “money-cannot-buy experiences” are though isn’t really specified, but considering the music business they’re in, we foresee stuff like fan meets with artist and maybe even backstage meets at concerts. We’ll try to dig up a little more and update you guys.
That’s all great and good but there is one thing that has gotten us a bit perplexed which is that Guvera doesn’t allow you users to play specific tracks they’ve searched for when they’re using the free Guvera Play service. Instead you have to subscribe to the Guvera Platinum service in order to enjoy on-demand music. Considering that Spotify and Deezer already offers users access to on-demand music on their free services, not having that option kind of limits Guvera’s appeal to users. Hey we love discovering music or having them recommended to us but sometimes we’d just want to listen to things we want to listen, without having to pay for it.
To kick things off in Malaysia Guvera is also starting pretty big by having a concert here in KL which is happening today (15 August). The headliner will be hip hop star and actor Mos Def, now known as Yasiin Bey and will also showcase Joe Flizzow and SonaOne among others.
Guvera has also entered buddied up with Lenovo as their World Wide Music partner, so you’ll be seeing the Guvera app pre-installed in the Lenovo mobile devices including their tablets and smartphones.
So interested in trying this new music streaming service? Guvera Play is free and you can download their apps on iOS and Android. Rather use a PC? You can head over to www.guvera.com. As we mentioned before, Guvera has a premium called Guvera Platinum and from RM14.99 a month, you’ll get unlimited access for online and offline music listening as well as on-demand music, all of which comes without any of those pesky ads.
