Music streaming is making it’s way to the Middle East with an influx of apps that cater to our ear buds being introduced to the local app stores. We had Anghami quite a while back, a music streaming app that I reviewed a while ago that checked all the boxes when it came to music streaming. Now it has a contender and I’m not talking about Spotify (which to be honest, is the reigning king of music streaming). The new boombox tooting kid on the block is Guvera.
When I reviewed Anghami, I found it’s interface appealing both visually and in its simplicity to navigate. It now seems I’ll have to eat my own keyboard for typing those words when comparing it to Guvera. Booting it up for the first time brings up the option to log in using either my Facebook profile or to create a unique Guvera account from scratch. I opted for the latter since I’d rather not have all my eggs linked to a single social media platform. Once that was out of the way I could start using Guvera. The main interface is strikingly similar to Anghami’s with a few differences setting it apart and in my opinion making it much more striking in appearance. On the home page music is divided up into a multitude of different generic playlists, the first being the New Releases followed by Chart Toppers, the latter being the fuel that gets us through the average day by pumping us full of energy. Swiping down brings up even more playlists such as “Summer Tunes”, “Bollywood & Co” and “Girls Night Out”.
You can pick and choose curated playlists to listen to such as the ones mentioned in the last paragraph. In this sense Guvera is more akin to 8Tracks, another great platform for music, where users can create playlists and then share them to friends or other users. And much like 8Tracks, in Guvera you can only skip a certain number of songs, six in fact, every hour. As a result this should curb the antics of people, such as me, who suffer from chronic song skipping, resulting in car rides where you can actually listen to a song in it’s entirety rather than having a friend play another song just before the bass dropped. However, you can search for specific songs, but you won’t be able to play them instantly without upgrading to Guvera Platinum. Rather when you search for a song and play it, you are merely queuing it up to be the next song to be played.
One of the best features of Guvera was the #PLAY page. Ignoring the capital letters and hashtag (for some reason things with hashtags are cool nowadays) this feature lets you create your own radio station by selecting different genres you want to play. Once you hit the #play button after choosing your genres, it cycles through the genres, playing through different songs from different genres. I found this perfect for creating a steady stream of songs that catered to the mood I was in. Another feature of Guvera is the ability to follow curators who appeal to your taste in music and friends who have created custom playlists.
Guvera does however have its shortcomings, often songs would not buffer and load despite having a decent internet connection. I’d have to either switch playlists or restart the application for music to start streaming to my Nexus again. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to these interruptions in streaming making it a rather arduous process of listening to some tunes since every time you loaded a playlist, a different song would play.
Furthermore, since it is the free version of the app, it does have advertisements playing every few songs which is the standard for free music streaming services, however to upgrade to Guvera Platinum, you have to pay 33 Dirhams every month. What do you get for AED 33? No ads, which is the norm for subscribing to any music service. You also get to play any track at anytime and have unlimited skips, taking the can’t-skip, radio-like feel away from the app, making it not similar to 8tracks anymore but akin to the free version of Anghami. The option to create playlists and effectively become a curator is also given to you, again something you can get in the free version of Anghami. Lastly you get to play tracks offline by downloading them to your smartphone.
All in all, Guvera feels like a confused app that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be: A free radio station music streaming app akin to 8Tracks and Last.fm or a paid music streaming app such as Anghami or Spotify. As a result Guvera seems akin to a newborn stumbling about without a clue of which direction to head in. In my opinion, I find the free version of Guvera far more appealing than the paid version (which has a ridiculous price to it).
What do you think? let us know in the comments below.
