1. What exactly are Podcasts?

Podcasting enables you to listen to audio programs at your convenience. Once you subscribe through podcatchers, whenever new episodes are available, they get downloaded to your PC automatically. You can then listen to it time-shifted, that is listen when you have time to listen – either on your computer or by transferring to your portable MP3 player like the iPod. Do you have to have an iPod? Not really, at least for Podcasts, but there are zillions of other reasons why folks crave for it!

2. Where do I get Podcatchers?

Podcatchers are software programs that let you subscribe to podcasts and manage them. Thankfully, most of these are free! You can choose from iTunes, Juice, Doppler, Podspider and many more. Or use RSS aggregators like MyYahoo, Google, MSN.

3. How do I listen to your episodes?

You can listen to the episodes in various ways. The simplest way is to click the “Play” button on the player where it says “Click Play on Player”. This player needs the freeware Adobe Flash installed on your computer. Or else, you can stream the file through Windows Media Player, Real Player or any other media player application (Winamp, Quicktime etc.) installed on your computer. You can also save the mp3 file directly on your computer to transfer it to your MP3 Player .

>4. How do I  Subscribe to your podcasts?>

You can always visit our website periodically to check for new episodes and click the play options to listen. But, a free subscription to Awaaz Pahadan Di means that as soon as a new episode is added by us to this website, you have it automatically available on your computer. There are a couple of ways to set this up – either through a podcatcher like iTunes or Juice or through RSS aggregators like MyYahoo, MyMSN, Google etc. Follow the steps below for setting up your subscription.

Subscribing through iTunes

1. Right-click on the “RSS/PODCAST” button above and select COPY LINK LOCATION.

2. Launch the iTunes application on your PC. If you don’t have iTunes, download it for free.

3. In iTunes menu, select Advanced>Subscribe to Podcast.

4. Right-click in the URL box, select Paste and then Click OK

5. iTunes adds Awaaz Pahadan Di to your Podcast folder and starts downloading the latest episode.

6. From now on, whenever iTunes is running on your PC, it will look out for latest episodes and download it automatically.

7. To listen to these episodes, select Podcasts on the source panel to the left, click the down arrow to the left of Awaaz Anjane Podcast to expand the episodes, select the one you want to listen and click Play.

5. How do I listen to the podcasts through an iPod/MP3 player?

1. Right-click on the Download MP3 button in any of our episodes above, select Save Target As and save the file on your computer.

2. Follow the procedure you typically use to transfer your favorite MP3 files to your MP3 player.

3. iPod owners – If you are subscribed through iTunes and have an episode automatically downloaded, connect your iPod, right-click on the episode in iTunes and select Add to Playlist>[Your iPod Name]

4. Non iPod owners – If you are subscribed through iTunes and have an episode automatically downloaded, right-click on the episode, select Get Info,under Summary tab look at the Where field at the bottom. It tells you where it has downloaded the MP3 file. Use this location and follow the procedure you typically use to transfer your favorite MP3 files to your MP3 player. For Juice subscribers, the podcast MP3 file location can be found by selecting File>Preferences>General tab.

6. How do I send you my songs?

We would love to play your songs. We need to have your song in mp3 format (encoded in 128kbps and not more than eight minutes in length, please). Record your song in a computer or if you have it in audiotape format, convert it to mp3 format in your computer. Then email us your song at songs[at]himachal[.]us. If you are singing to your own accompaniment, great! If you are singing to any track, please let us know the source so that we can credit the musicians who created it.

7. I have my songs on CDs and audio cassettes. Can I mail you those?

Yes you may. We will convert them and include in our shows. Please send us an email and we will provide you with our mailing address.

8. Do you accept instrumentals or original compositions?

Yes we do. We welcome original compositions. If it is a song then the language has to be Hindi.

9. Can I send you something other than songs, say, an audio commentary?

Absolutely. If you have written an original piece on any aspect of Hindi music that may be of interest to our listeners, please record your commentary and send to us in mp3 format.

10. How would I know you have accepted my submission?

Once we accept your submission to play in one of our upcoming episodes, we will email you.