Guvera.com's business model is basically similar to that of free-to-air TV and radio: you enjoy the content, and big companies pay for it.

"One of our missions is to make music free for people worldwide, while still paying the artists and the labels that create and distribute it," said Claes Loberg, CEO of Guvera.

Guvera's terms and conditions allow the personal, non-commercial use of downloaded tracks on an unlimited number of devices or their burning to an unlimited number of CD-Rs or CD-RWs.

So where does the money come from to pay the artists and labels?

Companies pay for 'channels' on Guvera which feature tracks that in some way reflect their 'brand personalities'. Participants include McDonalds, Dominos Pizza, Pepsi, Contiki, Johnson & Johnson and Harley Davidson.

What's available? See page 2.

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This is how the company describes the user experience: "Guvera - You select the brand that will pay for each piece of music you search for, then you visit their channel and discover a whole bunch of other music that may be interesting... then you channel hop, this is how you discover new music, all the while not being interrupted by ads you cant click past and now, you simply enjoy the music."

Rights to 300,000 songs have already been acquired and are available to the 40,000 Australian participants in the beta test. The catalogue is expected to reach 3 million by the time the site goes live on March 30.

Not interested in music? Guvera expects to announce movie and TV show downloads in the near future.

Either way, free, legal downloads from a large catalogue sounds like a significant breakthrough for Australians.

The downside is that judging by Guvera's material for potential advertisers, you may only be able to download a specific piece of content if you fall into a demographic group that a company wants to reach with that particular type of content.

We'll find out exactly how it works out in about a month.