Anyone downloading good quality Hindi music from the net ? Why do I ask ? Because I’d like to – but just can’t find the latest songs. Tried Emusic, and although they do have quite a few Hindi albums, and their service is quite good, ie; easy downloads and good search/browse capability, all music seems to be of the 80s and 90s, i.e.; no Rakht, no Dhoom, nothing even moderately of this era. Next tried Napster, but the same problem again, plus their search capability isn’t as good. Also these 2 services seem to have songs only from Saregama – what’s the deal with that ? Where art thou – O Tips, Venus, T-Series, Magnasound, Universal etc. ?

OK, then I traipse over to CrimsonBay, which is a wholly Hindi music site, and honestly thought their collection is quite large, they seem to be stuck in the 90’s too. Which means that they too don’t have the latest tracks online. The price seems pretty reasonable though – .69c/per song. Now, I have heard of Soundbuzz, but haven’t been able to load it up on my browser; browser hangs, and then after I while I give up. There is also this site called MegaCinema, which I haven’t checked out yet – site design seems to crowded and full.

Smashits does have the latest songs (all the songs from what I can see), but you can only stream music, and not download it, although the download thing is apparently in the works. Neat service though, you know if you’re working on the PC, and want to listen to stuff; can stream the entire album, or just repeat one song over and over again. Anyone tried Rhapsody, MusicMatch etc. ? As far as P2P services go, have been warned off Kazaa, since it downloads spyware on your machine and messes it up. Apparently there is a
KazaaLite, a version of Kazaa without all the nasty spyware – anyone tried that ?

Some sites do have songs to download, but a lot of them are in .ram format, which you have to convert to .rm to burn to a CD. And I haven’t tried it, but apparently the quality really deteriorates during conversion. Did manage to download .mp3 but the quality is bad – its like listening to a static-y radio station.

OK, end of (information-filled ?) tirade. So, if you have any suggestions on Hindi music websites, or any good/bad experiences trying to download music, for thegreater good of (Hindi music loving) mankind and self, please post a comment and let us lesser mortals know.