I recently discovered [[http://dhingana.com|Dhingana]] and I’m just loving it! Its definitely the **best** Indian music streaming site //ever//. Not to mention, its FREE! Here’s how Dhingana is better than the competition (raaga.com, musicindiaonline.com)

[[http://floatingsun.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/dhingana-player.png|{{http://floatingsun.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/dhingana-player.thumbnail.png|Dhingana Player}}]]

* **No annoying ads**: I just abhor the pop-ups that plague raaga.com. MusicIndiaOnline is also mostly ads-free though.
* **Excellent user interface**: Dhingana is really easy to use. The interface is uncluttered, uses AJAX where it makes sense, doesn’t require registration to play songs. Its also much much simpler to navigate the collection and search for songs. Brightly colored tabs at the top show intuitive categories — movies, pop, remixes, ghazals, religious etc.
* **Better portability**: Dhingana works on pretty much all browsers on pretty much all platforms (yes, on Linux as well). They use a flash based player, and since the popularity Google video and YouTube have pretty much made Flash ubiquitous, it mostly works. I’ve yet to get Raaga working on Linux (I’ve tried with RealPlay as well as the Helix player — something or the other just keeps breaking down). Ditto with MusicIndiaOnline
* **Personalization**: Dhingana lets you rate songs, and create your own “Smart lists” (smart lists need you to log in though).
* **Better technology**: Now I don’t know the details of how Dhingana works, but it certainly seems to be much faster at streaming songs (the entire song is available within **seconds** and then I can skip to any location in the song. Even under heavy BitTorrent downloads, I can hear the music just fine). The audio quality also seems way better.

You can find a detailed [[http://dhingana.com/features.php|list of features]] and more on the [[http://dhingana.com|website]]. So go ahead, give it a spin! Enjoy!