These links are alive and kicking (unlike eSnips links which I had posted in the 'Girija Devi & Shobha Gurtu' and earlier posts). eSnips is more or less dead now as far as posting widgets is concerned. So enjoy !!
Almost everyone who has anything to do with music, both 'hindustani classical' and 'popular' must surely have visited www.musicindiaonline.com more than a few times. This site claims itself to be the largest Indian music resource on the internet. True of course, be it hindustani classical, indipop, bollywood, fusion or regional folk, you name it and it's all there on this site.
The difference between this site and other file hosting sites is very basic. Whereas musicindiaonline.com has it's own files on it's servers and has full control over the streaming quality of the music and also what files to put or remove, other sites like mediafire.com, eSnips.com, 4shared.com and the rest have no such control.
Many of us must have encountered a much wanted song on musicindiaonline.com and wished fervently that there had been a download button on this site. Alas, there is none and no trick such as changing the URL (a'la eSnips) work here.
But for few of us who desperately want a particular music file and are ready to spend a little time, there's a way out : a simple method by which you can download a file or even multiple files in one go.
Just follow a few simple steps. Remember this trick will work with Internet Explorer only.
Go to the Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Clean all the mess that has been accumulating in the browser's cache. Once the cache is empty you may go to the musicindiaonline.com site and search for your favourite song or album just as shown in the figure below.
Select the songs to be downloaded by ticking them or if you want them all, tick 'Select All'.
Click the 'Play Selected Songs' button. If you have not been to this site recently it will ask you to choose between Real Player and Windows Media Player. Select Windows Media Player as in the pic below :
The player will open up and your playlist will begin to play.
As the file is playing repeat Step 1 (i.e Disk Cleanup). But this time don't clear the cache but click on the 'View Files' option :
This will open a directory of Internet Cache folders as seen below :
Explore each folder (if you have cleaned your Internet Explorer Cache thoroughly, there should be four of them). You will find your playing file in one of the folders, growing by size as it plays on. Wait for the 'Duration' and 'Bit Rate' details to appear and click on the 'Play Next' button of the player to start playing the next song in the playlist.
You may now Copy or Cut & Paste the previous file to a folder of your choice. The files are in .wma format. Keep on exploring all the folders as the second file plays on and you will find it in one of the folders. Repeat the process.
You need not play each song to it's full length. On a fast internet connection a 15 minute song may buffer fully in a couple of minutes. But it's important that you wait for the 'Duration' and 'Bit Rate' details to appear before copying (or cut & paste) the file.
Keeping in mind that musicindiaonline.com has music streaming at a very low bitrate (20-24 kbps) an album consisting of 6-7 songs may be downloaded in 4 to 5 minutes.
Carnatic music lovers must surely have visited http://www.sangeethapriya.org/, one of the biggest archives of Carnatic music concert recordings. This is an exclusive website of classical music 'rasikas', maintained and run by them purely to share the 'live concert' recordings owned by them with other 'rasikas'. Commercial (studio) recordings are not permitted on this site.
Some of the members here have uploaded many recordings of 'hindustani classical music' too.
This one has an exclusive folder for hindustani classical music and is more elaborate in it's listing. You will find most of the 'Gharanas' featured here. This one will keep you busy downloading for quite sometime. Again a big respite from eSnips. You will miss the 'details' feature of eSnips though, as none of the files have description and are listed ftp style. You could be spending much of your time in figuring out what to find where.
For those of you who are thinking of having a Hindustani Classical Music collection of their own, here are a few very good links to start with :
Dr. Ashfaq Ali Khan's collection on mediafire.com :
Great collection, very rarely found private recordings included. My favorites are the Patiala-Kasur and Sham-Chaurasi Gharana folders. If deleted these files will be hard to find on the web, in the future. All classical music lovers, me included will always be indebted to Khan Sahab's generosity in sharing them with the world. He belongs to a now very rare to find, almost instinct species of genuine 'Rasikas' of hindustani classical music. An effort of a lifetime. As he has very aptly mentioned somewhere : 'Loot Sake To Loot' :
