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.

"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?

Checking The Boxes

Upon registering and before you’re able to download anything, Guvera demands that you begin filling out your profile with information on your favourite music, books, films, food, charities and so on. All up, there are eleven sections. Of course, what they’re trying to do is better match your tastes with the brands who advertise on the site. At launch, these range from Domino’s to McDonald's, Casio to Band Hero.

This initial barrier, however, is an annoyance in itself. For example, if you’re interested in getting the new Nova-endorsed pop single, you’ll have to answer a series of questions first: whether you prefer “cop shows” to “cartoons”, or if you’d rather dine on “frozen meals” or “all you can eat buffet”. (Yes, those are all real options that appear on the site.)

By instantly demanding that the user tell Guvera their life story through a series of checked boxes, the chances of them mindlessly clicking their way through their profile are greatly increased. As a result, Guvera may well be subverting its initial aims: to allow advertisers to better “engage with” and target consumers by catering to their tastes. In this respect, they've got the order all wrong. The first few downloads should be “on the house”, so to speak, before the site requests that you play the marketing game.

Upon creating an account, you’re awarded two credits per channel. One credit equates to one song download, however, the user is not charged for streaming tracks via the embedded audio player. When you reach the two-track limit, the site encourages “channel hopping” to continue downloading content from other brands. Two tracks ain’t much, though, especially if you’re trying to download a whole album, and it’s unlikely you’ll be spending much time on a particular brand’s channel once you’ve hit the two-song limit, no matter how “cool” they try to appear through their playlist selections.

Search And Destroy

With major labels EMI and Universal, as well as Australia’s largest indie, Shock, on board at the time of the launch, the site's catalogue is relatively substantial. M+N readers would be pleased to learn that music by the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Robert Forster, You Am I, and, erm, Angus & Julia Stone was readily available at the time of launch. However, searching for artists isn't particularly helpful.

With minimal filters in place to allow the sorting of search results by title or album, the user is left to click through pages of songs before finding the one they’re after. (In the case of Young Marble Giants, this proves particularly frustrating, as their Colossal Youth best-of compilation contains dozens of uninteresting demos.) Obligatory test searches for “naughty” words provides some amusement too. My download of 'Ashtray Cunt Eyes' by Canadian metal band Goatsblood is funded by Bacardi. Cheers guys.

Once you find the songs you're looking for, the process is a breeze: click an arrow and the file begins downloading through the browser immediately.

The Bottom Line

Once you overcome Guvera's initial profile-demanding punch-in-the-face, there's some joy to be had exploring the service to form unlikely advertiser-artist pairings (see above). In addition, there’s a nice warm feeling to be had by downloading a Wagons song for free and knowing that Henry will eventually receive a small royalty payment from their label in return for your gesture.

What The Artists Think

I asked two musicians to road test Guvera: Ian Rogers, bassist/vocalist for Brisbane doom rock trio No Anchor and Tim Shiel, a Melbourne-based electronic artist who operates under the Faux Pas moniker.

Is Guvera something you'd use again?
Tim: No. I think they'll find it much easier pitching the concept to advertisers than consumers.

Ian: No. Andrew, I can't see any reason to use this service. Yes, it's legal and the music is “free”, but getting to that free music takes far too long, requires that I hand over a bunch of personal demographic and taste-related information, and view advertising in return for a couple of tracks (at best).

There are other problems. Most of the music available isn't to my taste - I actually had trouble finding something to download to trial the system. I decided on 'Direction' by Interpol after failing to find anything of interest except the last two You Am I records, a Sonic Youth compilation track and a Saints best-of. Also, the search function is a dud. Try bringing up all tracks by a single artist. It's impossible as far as I can tell.

Would you be comfortable with your music appearing on the site?

Tim: I don't think so. I don't really want my music used as a tool by which advertisers can do their market research. It might be different if I thought that being listed on Guvera might lead to people discovering my music, people who might not find it through any other method. But this isn't really designed as a useful music discovery tool.

Ian: Despite what my involvement in No Anchor might infer, I'm no zealous advocate of DIY business practices. I do what works for me and the music my band makes. This site doesn't work for me. If I were ever to sell my music to an advertiser, it would probably not be to someone like Bacardi or Contiki (yuck), and they'd need far deeper pockets than those offered here. I'd advise bands to be especially careful with this.

What are your thoughts on the overt branding?
Tim: It's kind of absurd. The first thing I did was build my “profile”, which involved telling Guvera that I like pizza and sci-fi movies. I listed my favourite TV shows as “Cooking” and “Ghosts”. Then I searched for Jethro Tull. I found their 1982 record The Broadsword and The Beast, but before I could get to the page where I actually can hear the music, I had to choose a brand. All of them were there in a list, eagerly waiting for me to click one of them before I was allowed to listen to my lame prog rock. Bacardi. McDonald’s. Contiki. Harley Davidson. Am I meant to pick the brand that best reflects me, or best reflects Jethro Tull? I chose Contiki for absolutely no reason.

I know Guvera is building a profile on me, which I imagine now goes something like: "Tim lives in Melbourne, likes to eat pizza, and also likes to listen to flute-driven prog-folk records from the ’80s while travelling through Europe in buses filled with drunk 18-35 year olds." (To be fair, this is strikingly similar to the description I give of myself when I use online dating services.)

Ian: I didn't really look at the ads to be honest. I did not like the mildly invasive questionnaire I had to fill out to get my download credits (all two of them) and so I lied as blatantly as I possibly could. That was actually the most fun I had with the site: apparently I'm now a guy that likes cigars, bodybuilding and TV shows about ghosts.

Overall, was it a pleasant experience?
Tim: I didn't enjoy it.

Ian: No. It was a lot of fucking around to get a pretty bad Interpol song.

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