In 2003, kaustubh Srikanth, a computer engineer from Bangalore was struck by the idea of starting an internet radio station dedicated to independent Indian music. ‘Infinity Radio’ was born out of this idea and became India’s first Internet radio station for independent musicians. Infinity Radio played two hours of independent music produced by various local bands between 9pm and 11pm. Although the concept gained popularity among a dedicated group of friends and listeners it needed a lot more innovation to make it a grand success.In June 2005, engineering college classmates Gaurav Vaz and Shreyas Srinivasan joined Infinity Radio and decided to revamp it and give it a new identity and fresh start. The new radio station was named Radio VeRVe. “The uppercase letters V, R and V in Radio VeRVe signify ‘we are we’, implying that we are ourselves and our niche is to present to the world, music which we think deserves recognition”, says Shreyas Srinivasan, co- founder of Radio VeRVe. Radio VeRVe thus became a 24 hour internet radio station committed to preserving, promoting and sustaining the diverse and vibrant independent music scene in India. “Ours is arguably the largest collection of independent music across different genres in India,being played on an Internet radio station and we strive to add maximum value to the music being played on our station by backing it up with innovative content formats such as interviews, talk shows, podcasts, special features, articles, concert reviews, artiste updates,album reviews and much more”, says Gaurav Vaz, co- founder of Radio VeRVe.

Radio VeRVe is a privately funded not-for-profit, community-driven project that is built entirely using free and open source software.

We don’t believe in Digital Rights Management or anything which curtails the freedom of the users, In fact the copyright for the music we play is owned by the bands. We just retain them. The ultimate goal is to make a lot of independent music mainstream and thus a viable means of income for the artistes. Talent deserves recognition, we just want to be the small spark that started the fire” says Shreyas.

The procedure is very simple. Log on to http://radioverve.com and select a channel that interests you, go over to the music player and click on the play button. Radio VeRVe can also be accessed using external media players like Windows Media Player and Winamp and can be streamed on desktops, laptops, PDAs and any other internet ready device. Listeners also have the option of choosing between low-bandwidth stream for dial-up connections and high bandwidth stream for broadband connections.

There is no strict selection criteria for music to be played on Radio VeRVe and there is no restriction or bias towards a particular genre. The only pre-requisite is that the music should be original and must be of a good recording quality. Radio VeRVe does not play cover versions of any songs and supports only original compositions by independent artistes.

Musicians and listeners can contact Radio VeRVe by writing to music@radioverve.com for submitting their music, contributing ideas and suggestions. The all new Radio VeRVe website http://radioverve.com is set for a launch towards the end of July 2008.

With cutting edge technology, innovative content formats and hundreds of independent musicians offering quality music, Radio VeRVe is set to script a new chapter in the Indian music scene.