House of Guvera expanding to Melbourne, Mumbai

Australian streaming service Guvera is expanding its new music hub initiative, House of Guvera, to Melbourne and Mumbai, founder Claes Loberg confirmed.

The Australian venue is expected to open next year, and will work closely with local artist managers and record labels.

House of Guvera was launched in downtown Los Angeles’ arts district last month as a creative and event space for artists, musicians, film makers and brand partners. It will host live performances with established and upcoming artists. The idea is to help artists, provide its brand clients with new exposure and get the two sectors to network more.

Among the brands that Guvera works with in the 20 countries it operates in, are Boost Mobile, Victoria’s Secret, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Nikkon, Corona, 20th Century Fox and Kia. Its clients create “branded channels” using music, films and branded content to reflect their brand personality. Guvera claims a subscriber base of 11 million and a collective social media reach of 60 million.

Its Content Director Jake Denney explains, “Our goal is to bring the music experience to life in its rawest form and leverage our level of access to give music fans a point of view they don’t get to see on a regular basis.

“Brands are now providing as many resources to artists, if not more, than labels and we wanted a space that we could leverage to give brands a way to interact with a music loving audience, while providing free intimate shows of the highest quality to (the) music fan base. House of Guvera and our work with brands is the evolution of music as a business, and where the industry is going right now."

House of Guvera’s upcoming projects include the screening of its first short film in Vietnam, and beginning work with two unknown directors on music documentaries in Panama and Russia.

Australia is the only country outside the US where Guvera operates Fradio, designed to allow users to host their own 'radio' broadcasts using the tracks available in the Guvera library, whilst their friends and fans can listen and interact in real time.

India is now a major market for Guvera since it launched nine months ago; of its 7.5 million Asian users, 5.5 million are based there. It has begun a “university stream off” contest held at some of its top colleges to come up with special playlists.