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Drowning the sound of illegal music downloads
âMusic streaming is indeed the future of music distribution
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'Music streaming is indeed the future of music distribution.'
These words came from rising pop star Raisa.
The singer has collaborated with the music streaming application Guvera by making a celebrity playlist of tracks she loves, such as John Legend's 'All of Me'.
'I do admit that it will take time for streaming to gain a foothold. Nevertheless, it is something we have to take a shot at as soon as possible,' she told The Jakarta Post.
The recording industry has been losing revenue streams from the rampant spread of illegal digital downloads amid the waning popularity of compact discs.
'The [music streaming] concept is attractive because people get to access almost unlimited music at highly affordable prices. It is a concept that should eventually catch on,' Raisa says.
Guvera said it wants to cancel out noise caused by illegal downloads by providing easy access to an ever-growing library of international and local records, which has so far turned up the number of users by 10 notches.
'Illegal downloads are our biggest competitor by far,' instead of other music platforms also available in app stores, according to Guvera Indonesia advisor, Pontus Sonnerstedt.
Indonesian music buffs have become familiar with earlier music apps, such as audio platform SoundCloud and webradio last.fm.
'We want to be moving people from illegal downloading to legal streaming, be it paid or ad-funded,' Sonnerstedt says.
Similar to other music streaming apps, Guvera sports an online music library with 'millions of tracks' from international and lndonesian artists. Yet, unlike other platforms, Guvera has officially launched
itself in the country ' the first outside its Australian home base ' in February 2014.
Sonnerstedt said that Guvera has directly and indirectly partnered with more than 30 Indonesian labels and 10 international ones to gain the right to use their recordings.
Local labels include Aquarius Musikindo, Musica Studio and Nagaswara Music Corp., with international ones being the likes of Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
'We plan to bring lots of indie (independent) labels too, so we can have a very complete portfolio of labels,' he said.
With the presence of these labels, Indonesian users can henceforth enjoy tunes by local chart toppers such as Raisa and RAN.
The local flavor is evident right from the opening of the app, which displays playlists mixing local and international crooners.
'Libur! Libur!' (Holiday! Holiday!), for example, features Calvin Harris' Summer alongside Imanez' 'Anak Pantai' (Beach Kid), while the Best of Indonesia, as the name suggests, showcases local stars including Iwan Fals and Nidji.
Besides listening to the playlists curated by Guvera Indonesia, app users can also search for other artists, even the 1970s sensation ABBA.
Sonnerstedt said the instantaneous ability to search and listen to songs is what will get people to turn to Guvera, instead of to illegal downloads. 'The user experience is better,' he said.
However, the service comes with a price. After the trial period is up, subscribers have to pay for weekly, monthly or annual passes, priced from Rp 20.000 (US$ 1,70) to Rp 547.800, to access songs that they can play offline.
'The unlimited monthly pass is the most popular because the pass costs less than buying albums.'
Guvera Indonesia has partnered with credit card providers and payment platforms, including Doku Wallet and Codapay, to enable various forms of payment.
Sonnerstedt, who formerly headed Yahoo! Indonesia, said with more the payment methods available, more people will convert from being non-paying to paying users.
He added the number of users in Indonesia has leapt 10 times between the first and second quarter of the year and Guvera was expecting a 'doubling every year'.
'The key thing about the platform business is to have a lot of users so that the economies of scale works,' he said, adding that the app gave labels a cut of the revenues.
Guvera recently introduced #Play, a feature that allows users to listen to music free. The ad-supported #Play works using tags ' users can pick the genres they prefer, like #Pop or #RnB. Yet, #Play listeners can only listen to pre-shuffled tracks.
He added Indonesia presented 'the biggest opportunity in Southeast Asia', given the growth in smartphone ownership and purchasing power among the largely young population.
Moving forward, Guvera aimed to improve awareness about the app and about streaming.
'People do not know the advantages of streaming because it is still in its early days.'
