India Radio Live — Free Online Stations

In India, the national broadcaster has a poetic name: Akashvani, "the voice from the sky." Few countries have depended on radio as heavily to reach people across so many languages, regions and income levels, and few have seen radio change so dramatically in a single generation. That is why searches for Indian radio live and All India Radio online come from every corner of the world.

1923: radio clubs in three cities

Broadcasting in India began with enthusiasts. In June 1923 the Radio Club of Bombay made the first broadcast in the country, followed within months by clubs in Calcutta and, in 1924, Madras. On 23 July 1927 a private company, the Indian Broadcasting Company, opened its Bombay station under a government agreement. The venture lost money and collapsed within three years, and in April 1930 the government took over broadcasting as the Indian State Broadcasting Service. India still marks 23 July as National Broadcasting Day.

1936: All India Radio, and a name from Mysore

On 8 June 1936 the state service was renamed All India Radio. The more lyrical name came from elsewhere. In Mysore, a professor named M. V. Gopalaswami set up a small private station in his own home in 1936 and called it Akashvani. The name was later adopted for the whole national network. Under British rule, and especially during the Second World War, All India Radio grew into a major news organisation and began broadcasting abroad.

Independence and the first voices of a new nation

In August 1947, as India became independent, All India Radio hired its first woman newsreader, Saeeda Bano, who read the news in Urdu. In the decades that followed, AIR became the main source of news for most Indians, carrying bulletins in dozens of languages and dialects, and its regional stations played an important role in agricultural advice, health campaigns and education in villages that had no newspapers.

Film songs, Radio Ceylon and Vividh Bharati

One of the great stories of Indian radio is about music. In the 1950s Hindi film songs were kept off AIR's main channels, and millions of listeners turned instead to Radio Ceylon, broadcasting from Colombo, to hear the latest hits. To win them back, All India Radio launched Vividh Bharati on 3 October 1957, a light entertainment service built around film music, request shows and comedy. It became one of the best-loved services in the country and is still on air today.

2001: the private FM era

For most of the twentieth century, AIR was all that Indian audiences had. That changed when the government auctioned private FM licences in 2001. Radio City in Bangalore went on air on 3 July 2001 as India's first private FM station, and later auction rounds spread commercial FM to hundreds of cities. Private stations transformed the sound of Indian radio with energetic presenters, known as RJs, Bollywood countdowns, traffic updates and city-specific humour in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and other languages.

A dial divided by rules and by languages

Indian radio has one notable rule: private FM stations have long been restricted in broadcasting their own news, leaving news on radio largely to All India Radio. Community radio stations run by universities and non-profit groups add another layer, serving local issues in local languages. And because India is multilingual, the dial changes completely from one state to the next.

India's radio far from India

Indian radio follows the diaspora. Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam stations are among the most popular in the Gulf, and streaming lets families in Britain, North America and Australia hear the stations of their home cities. Below you can play the Indian radio stations online we index, from All India Radio to private FM, free in your browser.