Ask HN: Legal to stream music online in India ?

7 points by jarsj 16y ago ↗ HN

This may be applicable to certain markets only. I am in particular more interested about India.

There are plenty of websites bollyfm, smashhits, songs.pk, etc offering streaming for all Indian Movie Songs. Some even offer download. phulki.com also seems to be aggregating music but they store the MP3s on their servers. Is all this legal ? If not, what part is ?

4 comments

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csomar 16y ago ↗

Read their TOS and policies, may be they mention something.

Google "their name" + legal issues, may be you find a blog post or a forum thread about them on the web.

versesane 16y ago ↗

Dude 99.99% of them are illegal and run in either Pak/US.

sbhat7 16y ago ↗

Almost all music streamed and played in India online is illegal. PPL India (http://www.pplindia.org/aboutus.html) cracks down on such websites.

One needs to obtain specific license from PPL for streaming music online and such a license is quite expensive.

mallipeddi 16y ago ↗

I don't know about other websites you mentioned, but raaga.com looks legal.

They've an advertisers page which looks genuine - I've seen ads for new movies show up on raaga.com (I'm guessing if movie producers don't have a problem buying ads on that website, they're probably legal?). http://www.raaga.com/channels/home/advertise.asp