India has seen the rise of the internet based music services with the launch of OKListen for buying music of your favorite indie musician to Musicfellas offering streaming content.
Mumbai based BC Radio is a venture by IIT Bombay students who are passionate musicians themselves and are creating this as platform to help connect the two major stakeholders of the music community – the listeners and the musicians.
Be The Change Radio or BC Radio as it is popularly known is an online radio for music lovers. The indie music service is looking to showcase and popularize the abundant music talent we have in our country cutting across languages and genre barriers and present is forth to the listeners so accustomed to popular music.
The team comprising of Dhruv Joshi, Kaustub Pandey, Kritin Joshi and Saurabh Agrawal is spread across Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. Two team members (IIT Bombay students) are working on the project and the others have jobs but contribute their bit as pro bono consultants.
What’s important to note is that all the members of the team had at one point considered to make a career in music but felt that there were too many deterrents in the society. And they launched BC Radio to give back to the community they so passionately cherish.
BC Radio is partnering up with a leading digital indie music store. Under this symbiotic relationship, BC Radio would be the streaming partner for the artists’ content whereas the partner site would be the digital store where the music would be sold. Along with that they have on-boarded names like Dewarists and The Music Channel which are offering their content in the form of a curated channel. Famous indie bands like Them Clones and Parikrama already have their content on the service.
The present avatar of the website functions well and there is less to complain about. But the team is currently working on the next iteration of the site with a revamped interface and more functionality.
The new BC Radio would bring greater social integration along with options like a commenting system and a playlist functionality. Even though the core focus is on the radio like experience where the user only chooses the genre, channel or the festival and has random songs coming up. The idea is top be open and discover new content. Along with that the refreshed BC Radio apps for iOS and Android would be released in the coming weeks.
The venture is self funded and the team is initially looking to get the required traction from the users and the artists to establish itself as a credible name in the indie music sphere. Apart from the aforementioned partnerships with other music services, BC Radio would be looking at offline avenues in the form of creating a go-to destination for music lovers to track the latest music events and the details associated with them.
BC Radio definitely merits attention for the music loving souls out there seeking new sounds and for the artists looking for an exciting music platform. The partnerships BC Radio has formed with major college festivals and with upcoming talent is the most underrated feature of the service. It ensures that the content is always brimming with a new voice waiting to be heard at the click of a button.
Do give BC Radio a spin and share your comments/feedback with the team.
