The Login Screen

I really don’t like how the text is aligned to the right, however the input is aligned to the left. So when you click on the box your focus is in the wrong spot (text should disappear when you click the box)

Home Page

There is a lot more going on, social network links, images of bands and groups, etc. This isn’t to be loved or hated but I see this as an improvement from what I remember.

Artist

This artist page has some cool idea’s going on. It is no Ping and it isn’t trying to be. Technically Guvera existed way before Apple announced their Ping service. It has 4 main sections which I’ll talk about quickly.

Overall though it is a decent idea for a page, and has many decent ideas within the page. This seems to be the biggest problem for me. There isn’t a way I can click on the subheading/section to see specific information or expanded information for that section. Pretty much all of the sections need to be removed from this page. Instead I would have the ‘Artist’ section down the bottom take up the whole page, removing the scrolling within the section and that way I get what I expect.

Touring

This lists the artists which I can only but assume are touring at the moment. Of course I’m not sure where this information is gathered from and there is no information on the site regarding dates, locations, info, etc. I did a few random checks on artists who have been listed as touring or having gigs this year and all cases they actually were (3 tests). Basically great idea, but provide information about the tour! There is also only space for 7 artists to be on tour, which is displayed in total random fashion. ie: If there are more than 7 artist on tour, it will only show 7 and there isn’t a way to list anymore

Greatest Hits

Well similar to above, artist who pretty much have ‘greatest hits’. Not much to go on here, it does what it says. Also in the similar 7 artist order, at least when you click on the link it takes you to their album/songs as that is the expected behaviour.

New Releases and Charting

Same thing, I guess this is an area to list new songs and if nothing new is happening, songs that are charting. Not much to say here really. Good concept.

Artists

Well this is stupid, it lists artist starting with A, however it can’t lis them all see it goes over pages. Fair enough. But then why do I have to scroll horizontally in this small window? I’m not a fan at all. Besides there seems to be a lot of artist with duplicates in the list. This needs a major revamp, great idea just not done well at all.

Albums

The Albums page follows the same formula of Artist. However I can’t help but feel it is better suited for Albums. There are 3 main section with images in the following categories, Live Albums, 80′s Classics and Our Picks. I’m not going to bother talking about each section. Basically I like the idea, however I want to click on sections, what happens if I want to look in other categories? Do they exist? Improvements could made for sure, however it needs to be talked about as there are pro’s and con’s.. I’m not getting paid for this (although maybe Guvera should swing me a few hundred bucks for my time).

Channels

Well I can say it doesn’t follow the same formula as the previous to pages.. but it kinda of does (not from a lack of trying). It basically lists My Channels, Our Picks and Classic Albums. Straight up, why is Classic Albums here. This has to be some sort of bug. I don’t see any relation to this. Remove it.

So basically a Channel is where stuff happens. I should probably expand on this, but I’m really only reviewing how things have changed and to me. It doesn’t looks like it has changed that much. I will say one thing quickly. “In the Guvera Channel, you can watch a video on ‘How to download’, where is the audio at? A little voice over to tell the users what is happening wouldn’t be bad, or some music. I can only assume there is nothing, or for some reason it wasn’t working on my PC (or should I say Mac now).

Update: There also appears to be no correlation to ‘My Channels’ vs what I’ve actually picked to ‘My Channel’ as seen under ‘My Guvera’. Of course it is called favourites, so maybe they are different things?

Genres

Well this follows the some formula. I can’t help but feel this formula needs improvement! I expect to see a list of genres of music I can select from, but I can only see 3 from which Guvera has picked. The thing down the bottom where I can search for a genre / refine the list. Like I said before this needs to be bigger, no scrolling, etc. This section however I’m pretty sure (100%) they aren’t even Genre’s you search for.

Update: There is a sub menu underneath the Genre menu when you click it. This lists other genres, however this needs work as well. Things just aren’t categorised well enough. (this was hard to find, mainly because of the said formula on the other 3 pages didn’t have this sub menu – also this technically looks to be the 4th menu from the top).

New Releases – Top Downloads

These two pages I’ve decided to put under the same heading. Basically it is the same formula, I’m that bored already I can’t explain it further. I will however say this is where I would expect a Grid slash (yes I typed it rather than using a symbol) Chart to display information, songs, trends, etc. Go look at the Aria charts for inspiration on this one.

Other Random Pages/ Things

• Favourites under ‘My Guvera’ displayed ‘created’, this is now when the channel was created from what I can tell but when you actually added to be a favourite. This is miss leading.
• My Account Details -> This has still be an issue/bug since I reported it last time (either reported it or wrote about it in a blog post, if not both). I still can’t edit my date of birth to my correct one. It is still of by a day (can you at least just change this for me now, make it a 13).
• It still doesn’t excite me, engage me or give me a reason to return. The amount of downloads is still limited to the amount of channels and how much an advertiser wants to allow. Fair enough, but I imagine you might max out at 10 downloads a year?
• There are now credits it seems now, it is purely ‘downloads available’ this is an improvement, I believe I commented on this ages ago.
• No way to interact with other users on the site? How big a community is this?
• What are the goals of Guvera, to give you legal downloads to music – well you can only do so much.. I think you need to expand your goals and become much more to keep interest (how about ‘Become the number 1 site for fans to get information on music’?, well.. I must admit I haven’t tried hard but I do imagine seeing stuff like artist page which albums, lyrics, tour dates, forums, chat rooms?, etc…

Summary

Guvera has progressed, however I would say it has only moved forward by about one or two ‘Sprints’ (translated Agile development talk into a time –> 2 to 8 weeks). This is really slow for an up start and to be honest it is one of the reasons why I haven’t visited it until now. In fact the only reason I did as I was prompted to give some feedback again. I can’t help but feel sorry for the guys at Guvera, as I can get right behind what they are trying to do and it isn’t with out great effort on their part (or is it). It just doesn’t seem to be working out for them. I feel they need more than ‘Beta’ testers to point our obvious flaws and bugs with the code, layout suggestions but they need to giving more direction as a company where they want to go. How they can open up and get people interested like me.

I wish them well, but I wont be visiting the site again until I hear people around me talking about it as I honestly feel if they don’t step their game up, their idea wont be so new and interesting in a few years once they change the lay out a bit more and fix a few bugs.

One point of note though. I haven’t commented on the range of music available which would have to be the biggest things. It would clearly appear they have gotten a lot more artists on board and there is more music on offer. I feel that this might of been their biggest challenge and has consumed most of their time. On this side, I think they are getting there for sure!

Upon getting the beta invite in an e-mail because I joined up with the pre-registration (by the way, not everyone who pre-registered has received an invite), I logged in and got presented with the Welcome screen. It very sleek and gets right to the point.

Login Screen for Guvera Beta

From this point you have 3 main options presented to you:

Random: If you don’t know what your looking for, click on Random. It will ‘randomly’ take you to a channel where you can see what songs are being offered.

Browse: If you want to look by artist, or by channel. (Browsing by artist isn’t enabled at this stage).

Search: If you know what you want, just type it in – (I think everyone knows how a search box works). One nice thing about the search is that it brings up a small photo of the album, song title, artist and gives you the ability to preview the song.

Channels is where it all happens!

Yep, That is right it is all about finding a channel where you can see a list of songs. So far on all the channels I’ve seen you can preview a song for 30 seconds, stream the whole song or what most people I think want – download the full song for free.

So how does it work? Well each channel is sponsored. For example a company or business can set up their own channel that has there branding on it. Additional links and information that is targeted towards the user. Each channel has had a different look, but have the sleek look which Guvera has going from the welcome page.

Your File: A module that shows you the album cover, artist, song, duration, size of the song. (At the moment this doesn’t dynamically update to the song you have previewed or clicked on to stream and not all of the fields are populated like duration and size).

Your Credits: Shows you how many credits you have and how to get more. (At the start you might not have that much but once you re-fill in all the details you did when you pre-registered this increases)

Playlist: A standard set of media controls to play music.

Music: The list of music being offered in a nice grid view (Love grid views). Title, Artist, Duration with button to Preview, Stream and Download. This is essential the main window where you do all you need to do.

Links: Sponsored links such as information, promotion or competitions you can entered provided by the channel sponsor.

Do you really get songs for Free?

Yes, you do. You get credit allocated to you and you can use this up. For example I had 1.60 worth of credit after I updated my profile on each one of the channels I visited. Once I downloaded a song at one channel I had .6 credit remaining. However on the other channels I still have 1.6 credits.

I downloaded a song and got the full length .mp3. Here are some more of the interesting details for those of you who are interested:

Size: 5.5 MB
Bit Rate: 256 kbps
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Format: MPEG-1, Layer 3
Encoded with: LAME3.98

Negatives / Bugs / Feedback

As it is a ‘BETA’ you are to expect bugs, and problems to occur. The idea is to give a small group a test at the system and to address issues found before it goes main stream. Often a users first impression lasts and it could taint them from using it in future. If you are a BETA tester you should keep this in mind, that what you are seeing isn’t the full product. So here is my feedback:

No ability to give feedback: Ironically, I couldn’t find a submit bug/forums/e-mail button anywhere to submit any problems I was having. This is the main reason I’m doing a blog post. I’m hoping this gets back to them and so they can make some improvements.

No ID3 Tags on MP3′s: This would have to be the number 1 problem I have. The mp3 I downloaded (at around 220 Kb/s) had a massive file name that doesn’t describe the song or the artist. I also made the assumption there would have to be ID3 Tags that would handle this instead. This is not the case. There is pretty much no way to identify the song you have downloaded (not unless you manually edit the file name or insert ID3 tags yourself).

Updating Profile / Favourites: There is a fair amount of questions and I had to refill in all this after I had done this to pre-register. It seems like double handling and I don’t like it. Also when it comes to your date of birthday details it actually doesn’t save this correctly. For example my date of birthday is 1 day out, as after I save it and return to the details screen it has entered in the previous day I was born.

Your Song Box: This doesn’t dynamically update to the song you are playing or have selected on the channel.

Multiple Windows: You really can’t go opening multiple windows. You can’t for example up 3 different channels and save those channels to your favourites. It will only do it for the last one you opened and you will soon see that the 3 pages you have loaded up are all the same instead of 3 different channels. You basically have a ‘single click, one window only mentality’.

Address Verification: Not sure how this is meant to happen and there is no information on this. This needs to be expanded and explained further. There also needs to be a ‘why do we need to do this’, ‘why do you need this information’ thing going through my head.

Forums / Chat Room: I would like to see a forum \ chat room made available. I might not use these features myself but I was looking for a way to communicate with other users. Imagine if a channel had its own chatroom available or a forum? It may be a way to engage the audience and create a community where people will come back (not just to download songs). This would provide greater exposure for the sponsors and Guvera and a reason for the user to stay connected. With the targeted information (such as location), it could be easy for a Brisbane radio station to get people in the Brisbane area talking to each other…. – I’m sure this idea can be expanded more and thought out more if it hasn’t already.

Credits: Credits look strangle similar to dollars. I feel like I want to call the dollars or money. I also don’t know how much a song will cost me (money term there). Perhaps this could get looked at. EG: I have 1.5 credits meaning I have 1.5 songs. I have no idea how I get half a song, or how my credits will increase now that I’ve updated my profile. I bit more explanation here guys would be great. That grid view of songs would be good to see how much credits a song costs. I’m assuming all songs cost the same, but maybe they dont?  If this gets a bit more of a look, that would be great.

Conclusion:

Guvera, does what it set out to achieve. I was able to download a song legally as an mp3. It was easy to navigate around and find the song I wanted, however once I got the song on my computer I expected more (ID3 Tags). This has actually led me to deleting the song I download so it won’t ruin my music collection rather than re-naming it myself. There are a few bugs with the site and things that need to get looked at, but see potential.

The music being offered isn’t ancient, but it also isn’t the latest stuff out there. Guvera is working on extending this further, and I look forward to it. I’m keen to see how things pan out and I would like to encourage people to pre-register but at this stage I wouldn’t recommend it to other people in this BETA stage.

Oh and ‘hi’ to the guys working there at Guvera, I believe your office is just down the road in Robina, QLD. I would like to see this work out for you guys, as support local talent is always nice.

Update 14/1/2010:

I’ve received some nice Feedback from Guvera via twitter which I would like to say thanks for taking my thoughts on board. I’ve noticed a ‘report a bug’ button. Once there are more changes, I’ll be willing to go through it all again.

The original Napster was a hugely successful online music sharing service, which was shut down by court order. However it paved the way for many other P2P file-sharing programs. The question of whether these sites are ethical is still a controversial issue.

So what can the music industry do to solve this dilemma? There has been an interesting site discussed on several blogging networks that may just have a solution.

Guvera, a new website has stated that they have found a way to make downloading music legal! “The biggest change to media in history. Music, film and TV for free”. As stated on their Myspace page, Guvera is set to give people access to free music, built around a very unique business model that still pays the artists.

There is a still a lot of mystery surrounding the site, however you can pre-register at www.guvera.com. The site asks its users a number of questions, such as their interests in music, food, films, countries and much more.

For more information, click on the following link:

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___1_20.pdf

http://www.promoney.com.au/pdf/client_resources/pdf2/Guvera_Investor_Presentation_August09___2_20.pdf

It appears as although advertisers will be paying for the free content themselves. This concept definitely sounds like a new and exciting way to gain access to television, film and music content. I think it could represents a new Internet phenomenon.

What are your thoughts on the matter, would you be more tempted to download content if it is free and legal? Or would relying on advertisers to provide this service deter you? I for one cannot wait to see what Guvera presents.

Information on the internet suggests that the planned launch of mid this year has had some unexpected delays but it can’t be too long now.

• http://twitter.com/Guvera – Guvera’s Twitter Account
• http://www.myspace.com/guveradotcom – Guvera’s My Space Account
• http://www.linkedin.com/companies/guvera – Guvera’s LinkedIn Account