Guvera hits 10m users worldwide, highlights success in India and Lenovo partnership

Australian music service Guvera has quietly built up a significant user base worldwide as it announced this week reaching the 10 million users milestone.

The company acquired Blinkbox Music from Tesco earlier this year, an acquisition that resulted in adding the service's 2.5 million users to the total tally.

Guvera also entered a number of new markets over the past year and is now present in 20 territories, but the most successful rollout was undoubtedly the one in India, where the company managed to reach 3 million users in just six months. 

The company is betting on the freemium model and whilst initially its offering was entirely free and funded by brand partnership, now the service does offer a premium tier for its most avid users. 

At SXSW, Guvera launched a new product called Fradio (for now limited to the US and Australia), which allows users to host their own broadcasts using the vast library of tracks available on the service. This is a neat idea as the app allows listeners to interact with the broadcast in a variety of ways and enables the radio hosts to do what they like without having to deal with the headache of hosting their own feed or getting licenses for the music.

Guvera also partnered with Lenovo, this will see the Guvera app preloaded onto the manufacturer’s tables and smartphones and could be a major driver of new users.  

Overall, the numbers look promising but it would be interesting to see more on retention and also on how many of the Blinkbox subscribers have remained active users since the acquisition - by the time the service was sold it had very little traction. 

Darren Herft, the CEO of Guvera Limited, stated that the company will continue to focus on brand partnerships: “Branded channels are a great example of how users are able to engage with brands in a less disruptive manner. Guvera is putting the consumer in charge of the advertising experience. Moreover, advertisers know that they are paying for ads that consumers want. We believe that Guvera is a platform for advertisers and brands to connect with a significant database of users, made possible with the help of Guvera’s innovative content-targeting algorithm.”

(Andrea Leonelli)