My otherwise chaotic Sunday was rescued by the discovery of Gaana, India’s online music and radio emporium. It works beautifully on my Google Chrome tablet and comes with endless streams of Bollywood hits. I strongly recommend the Filmy Mirchi radio channel, which will surely cheer you up under most circumstances. I also love the Perla Nasha “non-stop 90s” stream, which plays those wonderful Bollywood duets in which He endlessly pleads for her and She prances around beyond his reach, but who is anyone kidding—we all know what is going to happen next.
Gaana is available on the web and in all the usual mobile flavors. Tech 2 has a nice summary of the best India mobile music applications. These include Saavn, Tunebash, and, of course, SoundCloud and TuneIn.
Meanwhile, The Wrap reports that Shiiva Rajaraman, the executive setting up YouTube’s music subscription service, is leaving Google for Spotify. He is following YouTube developer Shishir Mehrotra, also a Spotify person now. YouTube is expected to get the music service up and running at some point in the remainder of this year. If it is going to be boring as Google All Access then no rush, I can wait.
Finally, restaurant patrons in Albuquerque, New Mexico will soon be able to cast digital ballots for their favorite dining songs, thanks to Kanoodl. The application will compete with Muzak and Mood Mixes, except that customers will be able to cast “like” votes on tunes via Facebook and even pick songs. I did not realize until I read this article that eateries pay up to $250 a month for those Muzak style streams. The little breakfast/lunch joint that I and a good friend have been patronizing for over a dozen years every Saturday has a cheap old CD box and plays awful seventies tunes. The food is good so we just ignore it, which is easy to do since the box is small and barely audible. So is the restaurant’s physical size, which is why I presume that it is exempt from any royalties requirements. But if it was larger and played radio or Pandora or something like that, that would be a different matter.
According to the National Restaurant Association, if a 3,750+ square foot restaurant streams a radio signal with more than six loudspeakers, or more than four speakers in any room or adjacent outdoor facility, or if charges a cover to get in, the establishment must secure “performance rights” (translation: pay somebody some money). As for Pandora, eateries have to get one from Pandora’s licensing partner, DMX. Here’s the obligatory scary article about a North Carolina grill having to pay over $30k for illegally playing four songs.
But getting back to the voting-on-the-tunes-while-eating question, why would I want to do this? I go to restaurants to (a) eat and (b) talk to people. I’ve got a feeling that this idea will be popular with children, but what will these joints do if a bunch of late-stage rugrats tell them that their music sucks and they want something else? “Look kiddies,” I’d say, “at $12.50 an entree just enjoy your Katy Perry.”
In a future post I will be pondering the impact that Twitter has had on music based social media platforms. Did Twitter put the kabosh on MySpace’s growth? Any thoughts welcome.
We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.
