Rhydhun Beta Preview Finally!
January 3, 2008 4:02 am Development, GeneralAfter 2 and half years since I began writing the first piece of code, Rhydhun has finally come to the stability to take it to the beta stage. 2 and half years might seem like a very long development time, but its probably only about 6 month that I really put into it, considering I have to go to University and I worked on it during my “holidays” (notice the quotes) and free time and the development team consisted of just me to do everything from web page design to database design & implementation. But, its has been a long 2 and half years, where most of the components in Rhydhun has be rewritten from scratch multiple times. Rhydhun features one of the most complicated skins I have encountered, but I am happy to see its not a performance hog. The excellent audio decoding has been optimized. Many of things I have done is to make things run faster and better.
Rhydhun started out when I tried to think of ways to make MusicIndiaOnline better after its 3rd rewrite about 4 years ago, I had a large list of features that I had planned to have in MusicIndiaOnline.com as you might have noticed the many “Under Construction” and “To be implemented” signs in MusicIndiaOnline, but never got down to it. When I started to juggle around ideas, I also felt the quality of MusicIndiaOnline.com’s music should be improved, I felt the organization of songs was little too complex, it was become a huge hassle to make MusicIndiaOnline work on all the OS platforms and I really didn’t feel adding more features would put MusicIndiaOnline on the bleeding edge. So, I decided to completely go away from having music being streamed to a browser and to write a full fledged application from scratch. Currently Rhydhun is for Windows, with Linux and Mac OS X version to follow in the next 2 or 3 months.
Rhydhun was set to launch last year around this time as many of you might have seen a notice of something cool coming on MusicIndiaOnline.com’s main page last year, but due to many issues in the middle such as a major data loss, which removed a couple of months of free time to fix it took a little longer. But this version is complete as far as my first milestone for Rhydhun was originally planned. Now, I am off to design and implement the other cool features planned for the 1.0 release that will make Rhydhun much better to use.
As of now Rhydhun is being beta tested, it is available for a selection of users, which we will increase as time goes on. I urge you to join our beta program, which you can signup for at: http://rhydhun.musicindiaonline.com/. Please signup for the beta program and we will contact you as soon as we can!
I hope you will enjoy using Rhydhun!
January 4th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Hi There,
I have been watching this site for a long time now (I have been using it too!). Having known now that you did it all alone, I must say ‘great job’. Keep it going. wish you a great success.
Koushik Varaghur
January 4th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Hi Anand,
Enjoyed your Rhydhun tour and the sound quality! Thanks for your wonderful effort. I am still not sure I would want to pay for something regularly if I have not tried it out. What about song downloads? Will that also be available?
Great Job! Thanks for bringing good sound quality to music lovers (mostly hindi film music and ar rahman) like me.
Much Appreciated.
Akhilesh
January 5th, 2008 at 12:11 am
Hi Anand, I’m impatiently waiting to try Rhydhun! Looks really great! But I’m not sure if I would like to pay for it…
Except that, it’s pretty cool!
J
January 5th, 2008 at 3:06 am
HALLO,
LAST 2 YEARS U GAVE ME ENJOY OF DIFFRENT TYPE OF MUSIC…..THANKS..
I WISH U BEST LUCK FOR FUTURE…
PL.TRY TO ADD WESTERN…INSTRUMENTAL…
THANKS,
KISHOR.
January 5th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I have enjoyed your earlier effort with musicindiaonline which allowed me a access music and songs I grew upwith. It is the most comprehensive single source for indian music. I dont have to carry cd and tapes and I can have my favorite music available on line regardless of where I am in the world. I look forward to your improvements in the rhydhun.Be happy to pay for it as long as it remains reaonable.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
MusicIndiaOnline has become my first choice for Indian music the past year. Good luck with rhydhun which is an excellent name by the way.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Impressive look and feel, high ease of navigation, overall a commendable effort - a significant stride in legalised music in India. Here’s wishing Rhydhun’s team sustained success in its future endavors.
Megh
ISB Class of ‘07
January 7th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I am waiting to hear from you to enroll for Beta program.
Encountered one problem registering for Beta program.
The last item is whether willing to pay. The choices are Yes or No.
If No is selected, why the amount greater than 0 must be selected?
It is also pre-mature to ask for willingness to pay without having a chance to try out the music site.
January 7th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
impressive my friend - very very impressive - quality of Indian Classical music is lacking but I am sure there will be adds in the future.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Great idea moving the browser functions to a program interface. If you slowly add advanced heuristics on music listening patterns and come up with recommendations, you have a winner! Slick interface (from what I see in the demo).
Cheers,
Manu
ISB Class of ‘07
January 8th, 2008 at 3:41 am
I was a user of the website for a long time.! I am really interested in useing this new application and the idea is great! But i dont think a lot of ppl will agree to to pay! Since it is a downloaded app you can make full use of advertisements..! I am waiting for me to get the privilage to use the app..!
Peace
Sidharth Vijayan
January 9th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Hello,
After going thru the tour, I liked the design of rhydhun. Its pretty much similar to Rhaphsody, iTunes and Yahoo Music Engine. Having something like that for Indian music is exciting! I have a question though, is this site legal? Do you single-handedly maintain musicindiaonline.com? I would be surprised if you say yes. However, I will be disappointed if its illegal.
Please let me know.
Thank you,
Srinath
January 10th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Hi Srinath,
I single-handedly am the maintainer of MusicIndiaOnline.com’s technical functions. Though the content is managed by a large team.
-Anand
January 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Hi Anand,
Just took a tour of your site. Very impressive!! Kudos!
It would be nice to have a i-pod plugin and allow downloads. Today, you don’t find a Indian Music portal that allows download. I am certain that many out there like me would luv the idea to hook up into one portal and download music.For the price of a monthly subscription, if you can allow download and synch up to i-pod, that will be priceless.
Best Regards,
Suresh
January 13th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Hi,
Just signed up for Rhydun beta program and waiting for the activation request. I have been a MusicIndiaOnline listener for almost 8 years now. This is one site I go to for listening all the songs which I grew up. I will pay for Rhydhun, if downloads are allowed.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Dear Anand Iyar,
Hai! Thanks for the email letter sent to me regarding MusicIndiaOnline Team update software. I have signed up for the latest version of the software (Beta) version. But I have not downloaded the software as yet as I am on the waiting list. I had be very grateful to you if the software could be downloaded free of cost. Millions of listeners across the country will be thankful to if you could do this small help to them. I am very happy that you brought out some improvements in the software. WISHING YOU A VERY HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2008. Please do the needful. Pls send a feed back to mail address.
Thanking you Sir.
With regards
P.V. Krishna Kumar
Bangalore
India.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Dear Aiyyer,Im not as yet getting the software.May B on subscription? Me not a tech hand but can B of use in passing on info as a user friendly!!IE7 exe dll is not compatible $ beta.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Kindly give trial dlls.for a stipulated time and get fbs.The pudding is in the eating of it!!!
January 15th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Thank you Anand for inviting me to use this wonderful program. How much longer do you think we will need to wait until we can start using it? There is no “Login” currently so I presume you are still working on it. Sorry I did not complete listening to the guided tour. I love music and thank you for your efforts. Do consider regarding the payment aspect that the others have written about.
Good work buddy and keep it up.
Anu
Mysore
India
January 16th, 2008 at 4:19 am
i would be glad to comment if there WAS some thing to comment upon.how can one comment without listening to any ’sample’music track?as far as musicindiaonline is concerned it’s a great website.i log in quite often to listen to a superb collection of Indian music.
January 16th, 2008 at 7:26 am
bonjour bon music hunde
January 17th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I have been enjoying Music India Online since a long time . Especially the Sanskrit section offers number of devotional melodies, which I have not been able to find anywhere else and also the Classical music section.
But I think you can add a bit more to folk songs - Tamil and Bengali
Just signed up for Beta - Looking forward to Rhydhun.
Surabhi
Pune, India.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
We have reviewed Rhydhun on WATblog. Keep on updating us with your future plans too.
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for sharing
February 21st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Wonderful application to search and play songs. Nice clarity of sound.
Good Luck
- Suraj
March 10th, 2008 at 4:50 am
it is the best side till date for music from net.
very users friendly very efficient
the contents are generaaly very good but need to have bigger variety.
also there are lots of mistakes like songs is not as mentioned in the title,the names are spelled wrong etc but these are mistakes which do not effect much. i am feeling very licky that Rhydhun invited me to try this site
good luck
May 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Hello Anand,
I have been using Rhydhun for a good four months now and I really like the concept. The sound quality is quite good and the collection of songs is pretty big too. Thanks for the invite.
I do have a suggestion though. It would be really nice if you provide an option of saving the playlists! It’s not too comfortable to enqueue all the songs in the same playlist as we need different songs for different moods.
Chandrasekhar