At a time when most online radio stations are belting out film songs, Bangalore-based RadioVeRVe has been doing its bit to promote original music by Indian artists in genres as diverse as rock and classical.

The artists do not have to pay for getting their song featured on the station, provided they fulfil certain criteria.

“We have three basic rules: the music should be original, it should be Indian, and it should be independent. This means the artist should own the copyright of the music,” said Shreyas Srinivasan, a co-founder of the station.

This is what sets RadioVeRVe apart from most other online stations that feature Bollywood and film music and are operated by Indians abroad.

“Since we started, we have continuously increased our listener count. More importantly, we have helped the country’s independent artists promote themselves in our own little way and thus built a well-knit community,” Srinivasan said.

“We have had a few artists get noticed by international music festivals. For instance, Soulmate, a band from Shillong, got invited to the Sun Dance Festival in Estonia because one of the organisers heard their music on RadioVeRVe.

“Manasi Prasad, a classical musician, got an invitation to tour Tanzania after she was featured on RadioVeRVe.”

Srinivasan said: “The station plays 24/7. All the shows we have are prerecorded. As of last month, we have seven different streams — rock, metal, easy, classical, gospel and Konkani.

“We are working towards launching a folk channel soon. When we started we had about 40 bands on RadioVeRVe. Today the count is 185. And we are continuously looking for new music and artists.”

When it began a couple of years ago, RadioVeRVe ran a live one-hour show everyday on independent Indian music. This was largely impromptu and had a core team of Srinivasan, Gaurav Vaz, a musician from Bangalore, and their friend Kaustubh as RJs.

“When we were presenting this at Barcamp Bangalore (a local entrepreneur meet), Geodesic Information Service senior vice-president Atul Chitnis suggested that we should instead record the show in a studio and loop it,” he said.

“All of us thought this was an excellent idea so we cleaned up Atul’s basement to set up the studio. After a couple of days, we finally had our studio. The rest as they say is history.”

Asked about the costs involved in running the station, he said: “The biggest cost is the server and associated bandwidth. There are also miscellaneous costs like website design and studio requirements.

“Some part of it is self funded. In recent times, we have also had a few sponsors who have helped us. We also have a few advertisers now, which help deal with some of the costs.”

Asked if any FM station had approached RadioVeRVe to play a song featured on the internet radio station, he said: “We have been in talks with a few stations about doing a segment on independent music. No definite agreements have been reached as yet.”

From “Daag” and “Kabhi Kabhie” to “Dil To Pagal Hai” and “Veer-Zaara”, the songs from Yash Raj Films’ romantic sagas always had a dreamy quality and the haunting melodies captivate listeners even today.

Here are some of the best musicals from the Yash Raj banner:

1. “Waqt” (1965) - Before Yash Chopra branched out on his own to form Yash Raj Films he regularly made films for his brother, the illustrious B.R. Chopra. “Waqt” started the long association between B.R. Films and composer Ravi who came up with some of his choicest jingles for this one.

At the peak of the Lata Mangeshkar mania, Ravi audaciously got Asha to do “Kaun aaya ki nigahon mein khanak” and of course, the evergreen “Aage bhi jaane na tu”. But the pick of the lot was “Ae meri zohra zabeen”, Manna Dey’s evergreen number that was also used by Aditya Chopra in “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” three decades later.

2. “Daag” (1973) - Yash Chopra branched out as an independent filmmaker with this melodious ménage a trois, remarkable for being the only time Laxmikant-Pyarelal teamed up with poet Sahir Ludhianvi. The end-result was there for all to hear in Kishore Kumar’s “Mere dil main aaj kya hai” and Lata’s “Jab bhi jee chahe nayee duniya” - the latter was appropriated from a Noorjehan ghazal.

But at the end of the endeavour, Ludhianvi vowed never to work with the mighty Laxmikant-Pyarelal again. “They don’t understand poetry,” Ludhianvi sneered. For his next project, Yashji had to choose between the poet and the composing duo. He chose Ludhianvi.

3. “Kabhi Kabhie” (1975) - Yash Chopra’s most poetic film and arguably his best musical to date, fished out Khayyam from semi-hibernation. Using Ludhianvi’s poetry and Lata-Mukesh’s vocals as crutches, Khayyam created a wonder world of poetry, passion and pain.

“Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein”, “Main pal do pal ka shayar” and “Mere ghar aayee ek nanhi pari”, are perennials. There were also some young tunes for Rishi and Neetu like “Jaan-e-man tum kamaal karte ho”, “Pyar kar liya to kya” and “Tera phoolon jaisa rang”. Lata went from being sweet 60 for Waheeda Rehman to sweet 16 for Neetu Singh without skipping a beat.

4. “Trishul” (1978) - Yash Raj-Khayyam’s follow-up to “Kabhi Kabhie” suffered for being an action movie. But the magnificent theme song “Tu mere saath rahega munne” lifted the whole score to the stratosphere of the sublime.

One of Amitabh Bachchan’s favourite songs, “Tu mere saath”, is arguably the best song that Lata has sung for a Yash Raj film. Bachchan played the protagonist in the film. Also, up there among the greats is the Lata-Yesudas duet “Aapki mehki hui zulf”.

5. “Silsila” (1991) - Shiv-Hari and Javed Akhtar created quaint and compelling numbers like “Yeh kahan aa gaye hum”, “Neela aasman so gaya” and “Dekha ek khwab”. “Silsila” painted as many shades of romance as possible.

The other scores that Shiv-Hari did for Yash Raj Films, namely “Chandni”, “Lamhe”, “Parampara”, “Vijay”, “Faasle” and “Darr” were no patch on that of “Silsila”.

6. “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (1995) - Though they couldn’t create a title tune to match the song of the name that Ravindra Jain composed in “Chor Machaye Shor”, there was nonetheless an everlasting swerve towards verve in “Tujhe dekha to yeh jana sanam” and “Ho gaya hai tujhko to pyar sajna”. Lata and Asha Bhosle belted out a solo each - “Mere khwabon mein jo aaye” and “Zara sa jhoom loom main” - for the effervescent Kajol.

7. “Dil To Pagal Hai” (1997) - Uttam Singh’s feisty songs were led by the foot-tapping “Dil to pagal hai” where the then 70-plus Lata sounded no more than 20. Yash Chopra’s utter devotion to the Lata’s vocals came to full fruition.

8. “Veer-Zaara” (2005) - Madan Mohan’s dormant songs were rejuvenated by his son Sanjeev Kohli. The numbers had an incredible amount of melody quotient, especially in the number “Tere liye”.

Udit Narayan’s voice dipped to an incredible bass in “Main yahan hoon yahan”. Every singer from Lata to Roop Kumar Rathod put his or her best foot forward to create a score that never bored.

9. “Bunty Aur Babli” (2005) - “Chote chotey shehron mein” the mood of lingering fun reached a full crescendo in this soundtrack. Gulzar put on his zany cap to write his sauciest song yet.

“Kajra re” ranks as one of the new millennium’s most successful item songs. But the love ballad “Chup chup ke” sung by Gaytari Iyer and Shankar Mahadevan ranks much higher.

10. “Dhoom” (2007) - “Dhoom machale” need we say anything more?

And the also-rans: “Kala Patthar” - Rajesh Roshan’s only tryst with Yash Raj contained the hit duets “Ek rasta hai zindagi” and “Bahon mein tere”.

“Mashaal” - On Lata’s recommendation, Hridaynath Mangeshkar got the chance to do one score for Yash Raj. Remembered for the bhajan “Om namah shivay”.

“Chandni” - “Mere haathon mein nau-nau chudiya” pulsated with the power of Lata’s vocal chords.

“Lamhe” - It had elegant though somewhat listless ballads by Shiv-Hari.

“Darr” - “Tu mere samne” and “Tu hai meri kiran” by Shiv-Hari were quite popular at that time.

“Mujhse Dosti Karoge” - Shiv Kumar Sharma’s son Rahul composed some extremely pleasant melodies. Lata went from papa Shiv to son Rahul with age-defying fluency.

“Salaam Namaste” - the zing sting by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

And last but not the least, “Fanna” - Jatin-Lalit got together for the last time.

Delhities got to hear the Pakistani singer Atif Aslam live on stage in Delhi on Saturday night. Aslam performed for just about two hours, but most of his hit songs were on offer by the man himself and Delhites were indeed a satisfied lot. The concert was the grand finale of the weeklong music performances since World Music Day on June 21.

Television producer. Music composer. Singer. Actor. Now TV host. Starting his career as a television producer, Himesh Reshammiya will be back to television – this time to promote his new film AAP KAA SURROOR, which opens worldwide next week.Himesh will be hosting a 30-minute special show on Zee Music called AAP KAA HIMESH, to be aired worldwide next week on Zee. Adlabs, the worldwide distributors of AAP KAA SURROOR, have teamed up with Zee to extensively promote the film.

Himesh is leaving no stone unturned in an effort to reach out to all his fans residing in the smallest of Asian pockets around the globe. In addition to this show, Zee is airing exclusive competitions offering fantastic prizes, including the most prized possession of Himesh – His cap.

The channel will also be screening makings, interviews, behind the scenes and unseen footage and songs from the film.

BIG 92.7 FM station, an on-air partner for Yash Raj Films forthcoming venture ‘Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom’, will Tuesday air the songs from the film in a promotional venture.The channel has exhaustive on-air plans for promotion of the music scored by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. The music of the film, which is ‘Bunty Aur Babli’ director Shaad Ali’s third venture, will premiere across all the Big stations except Chennai.

‘We saw a great brand fit with BIG 92.7 FM. We were extremely pleased with our association with the channel during ‘Ta Ra Rum Pum’ and are quite confident that our tie-up for ‘Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom’ will be even bigger this time,’ said Vijay Kumar, head Yash Raj Music, in a press release.

The film stars Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta and Amitabh Bachchan in a cameo.

Each song from the album will be heard exclusively on the channel and there will be interviews with Preity, Lara and Bobby.

Listeners also stand to win a chance to be part of an exclusive music video ‘Jhoom Baby Jhoom’, featuring common people dancing to the title track, in addition to getting an opportunity to interact with the star cast.