Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Besur Betal Betar

(Attention: The procedure for accessing the station has changed. The station is still available on the SHOUTcast Yellowpages but the playlist file available there has an IP address dependent URL, and my IP changes regularly: the feed will stop and you'll have to re-Tune In from the Yellowpages every time this happens. With the new system you'll (hopefully) need to merely stop and restart the track in your music player.)

Frustrated by my moojikally-isolated existence in sunny California, I have started an internet radio station called "Besur Betal Betar" for Hindustani classical music. It's a SHOUTcast feed: to access it, open this playlist file in your music player (Winamp or equivalent). In some players, you can simply open the URL "http://expiring-frog.hopto.org:8032". For more info, visit the station's homepage. If you can't access this page, the server is switched off: refer to the first caveat below.

Caveat 1: When the server is switched off for long periods, the feed will also (obviously) stop, and will probably not restart unless you restart it in your music player. If you see the feed is silent for a long time, click Stop in your player. Wait for some time (listen to something else :)) and click Play. If the feed has started again by then you should get some sound. Else click Stop, wait some more, and try playing again.

Caveat 2: The feed is not guaranteed to be 24x7, since my laptop is not always networked (e.g. when I travel between office and home).

Requests for tracks and artists are most welcome, subject of course to my having them.

The flavour of the day is Sharafat Hussain Khan (courtesy SCTR@JU) and Ali Akbar Khan, and my current playlist consists of about 23 hours of these two. Nice long pieces, mostly old, so do tune in if you're interested.

10 comments:

expiring_frog said...

It is, and I have already heard him live since coming here. But I'm not talking about concerts and institutions -- it's the immediate musical community that matters. I guess there are people in the neighbourhood, but I have to find them.

Meanwhile, the moojik keeps me going.

Teleute said...

aar amar station je ekhono cholchhe na tar ki hobe?
:(

expiring_frog said...

Tumi nari
Tomar station stationary
Ami ki korte pari?
ISP-r tulodhona koro taratari

Ami ki MCP!

Teleute said...

tumi chhaarpoka.
ba tar cheyeo boka.

expiring_frog said...

@satchisgod: Tahole je onyo loke raag korbe :D -- majhe majhe ektu Mallikarjun, Bhimsen ityadi bajate hobe.

Uploading jonyo ektu wait korte hobe boss... v. biji at the moment. But will do so soon.

Actually I don't have all that much AAK/NB here -- maybe 20-25 hours (~1.5 GB) in toto. Have more on cassette at home, next jokhon bari jabo tokhon prochur notun maal niye ashbo hopefully. 5 CD Alluddin achhe, and 4-te unripped NB, ogulo kokhono chalabo.

Na school-tae jaini. And afaik ekhono shekhan.

Anonymous said...

Really nice to have a streaming hindustani classical station online. hope some day you can get a higher bitrate!

expiring_frog said...

@sid: Thanks for tuning in. Even at the current 24kbps people have reported it keeps breaking up. I'm forced to keep the quality down for the sake of speed.

Anonymous said...

actually even with a low bitrate i am enjoying every moment via my roku soundbridge.

current steam been running for over an hour. no break-up whatsoever. yesterda also had no interruptions.

sid (in CH)

john said...

hello,
you have any of ustad sharafat hussain khan you said? which aren't there in net.i have a large collection of him too & can exchange :-)

expiring_frog said...

@john: I have some stuff. Mail me at firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com -- I'd be happy to swap. (My actual first and last names are in the About Me box, top left of the page.)