Posted: 24 October 2003 at 9:42am | IP Logged

With the high profile launch of several legal music downloading services it is a good time for us to wonder what role could they play in Indian Classical Music.

iTunes (or iTMS) by Apple has been getting rave reviews from almost everyone. So, when the windows version came out last week, I downloaded and installed the jukebox / music store software. Unfortunately there are only a handful of albums available.

ICM has a unique problem w.r.t. 99 cent tracks. Since some of our CDs can have just one or two tracks of 30 or more minutes, if they were to be sold for just 99 cents, you could download the entire CD for 2 or 3 dollars.

What ITunes does is to limit the 99 cent downloadable tracks to anything under 10 minutes. Thus only "folk tunes" in Hindustani albums would be available. Lot of Carnatic tracks should also be available for download, except the RTPs. But, most of the tracks in Ghazal CDs should be available.

Ofcourse, full length albums are not an attractive buy at nearly $10. Afterall most of the Indian CDs are priced around that point.