Tesco has had a tough old time of late, with falling sales and a fresh investigation into its accounts. The battered supermarket needs to turn itself around, and fast, so it's been looking to offload any nonessential services that may have been dragging down its balance sheet. Unsurprisingly, that means its various Blinkbox offerings have been some of the first to face the chop. After selling Blinkbox Movies to TalkTalk, Tesco announced yesterday it had auctioned off Blinkbox Music and plans to close Blinkbox Books. The supermarket still has its Hudl tablets, of course, but some of the more interesting services that came pre-installed are now no longer under its control. Clearly, Tesco just couldn't make enough money from them, but any chance it had of fixing the problem has now been lost.
So who took Blinbox Music off its hands? That would be Guvera, a music streaming service based in Australia that's currently available in 20 markets, including the US, India and Thailand. Both Guvera and Blinkbox Music are focused on free, shuffle-based playlists, although dedicated users can unlock extra features with a subscription. Despite these premium tiers, both services are aimed squarely at casual listeners that want a cheaper, but still legal, alternative to Spotify and Rdio. It's one of the reasons why Guvera has targeted emerging markets such as Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and the Philippines.
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