About the house

Always the right atmosphere for Indian dining

We are a small house that makes original Indian instrumental music and publishes it by the hour it belongs to. That is the whole of it, and it turns out to be plenty.

This began in a dining room, not a studio. We kept noticing the same small failure in Indian restaurants we loved: the food was careful and the room was not. A dinner playlist running at nine in the morning. A film soundtrack looping every forty minutes. A sitar solo arriving, at volume, in the middle of somebody's anniversary. Nobody could name what was wrong, and everybody felt it.

So we started making music for the hours instead. Morning ragas played sparsely for breakfast, when a room has few bodies and too much echo. Brighter tempos for the lunch rush. Sitar and sarod for candlelight. Then, at the very end, bansuri and a drone and almost nothing else, so the last two tables can finish in peace and the staff can begin closing without anyone being hurried toward the door.

Everything is original and everything is ours, which means a restaurant can play it freely with attribution and never worry about a rights holder, an advertisement between courses, or a licence renewal. We publish in weekly palettes — a set of ragas and instruments that carry across the week and shift with it — so a regular guest hears something familiar without ever hearing the same day twice.

We write about food here too, because the two decisions are the same decision. A dish has an hour just as a raga does, and a room that gets both right feels considered in a way guests remember without being able to explain.

Our mission is simple: always the right atmosphere for Indian dining.

We answer as the house rather than as individuals, and we prefer it that way. If you write to us, one of us reads it and one of us replies — warmly, and usually within two days.

Questions

Questions we hear

Who makes this music?
The house. Everything we publish is original — recorded and produced by us and credited to Indian Restaurant Music, never to a single name. The only individual credit anywhere is the writing credit in the footer, J. Frazee.
Is it really free for restaurants?
Yes. Our catalogue is free to play during service with attribution — a small credit on the menu or host stand is all we ask. A Pro tier is on the way for restaurants that want ad-free continuous playback and offline files, and the free catalogue stays free.
What makes this different from a generic playlist?
We programme music by the hour instead of by mood tag, so breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night each get the right weight and tempo — and nothing arrives in the wrong hour. It is all original Indian instrumental music made by the house, so no third-party rights holder sits between two courses.
Where can we listen?
On our YouTube channel today, organised by time of day — and our debut album is streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and more. You can find every platform on our listen page. See where to listen →

Come in

Two ways to begin

Play our music in your dining room, or have something made for one particular evening.