All India Radio (AIR) has launched an audio broadcast channel over free dish and the internet called RAAGAM. The channel is currently available as an app over Android, iOS and Windows. A Financial Express report mentions that the channel will also be beamed through one of Digital Terrestrial Channel (DTT) of Doordarshan. The RAAGAM app streams quite a few AIR channels; we found 13 in our area which included AIR Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Vividh Bharati, FM Gold, FM Rainbow etc. Tapping a channel takes the user to a new screen and starts streaming whatever is playing on the channel. Users have limited controls, to go to the next or previous channel, increase, decrease the volume and to pause the music. However, pausing is pretty temporary as switching channels or the screen restores the channel to its default playing location. The worst thing about the app is its inability to run in the background. This is a major oversight on AIR’s part, as users can do nothing else but keep that app in the foreground if they want to continue playing music. Switching screens, tapping on notifications or leaving the app screen for even a moment instantly stops the music. However, users can keep it on in the foreground and switch off their phone screen, so the app is much more useful for playing music when doing something else that doesn’t require phone usage. The app also lacks notification bar and lockscreen controls, but then again these features are pretty…
