In the pursuit of pop

Ramji Gulati made several rounds to the offices of music companies before realising that no one’s ready to put their money on young upcoming pop artists. It’s then that he got together with friends and friends of friends who too were going through the same ordeal and launched their own record label to support their own music and other artists.

“Wherever I went people said pop is dead in India. The scene is really bad and we don’t think this is going to work or this sound won’t work. Why didn’t they put their money on talent? That’s when we decided to come together and do it on our own,” says Gulati.

That’s how Richa Tripathi from Canada, DJ Akheel Talreja, Saikit and Shankar from Bangalore, Raman Mahadevan, DJ Shadow and Pradeep Mukhopadhyay from Dubai, DJ Dev and Gulati came together to start United White Flag (the record label) and released their own album by the same name. The singing, song writing and composition are all done by themselves. Their first album came out few days ago and they are already working on their second one United White Flag 2.

Akheel says that the idea is to be bring ‘singles’ to India. “We will have video for each of the tracks on the album. We want to bring the idea of singles and Indipop back into the reckoning,” he says.

“Also, like the name suggests we are not doing it only for ourselves but other artists. When artist get into a record label they understand other artists. Most companies judge the sound beforehand. Why not let the public decide if they like something or not? Our job is to take their music to the public,” says Gulati.

WHAT THE FLAGS ARE OFFERING ARITSTS:
There will the creative freedom and financial freedom which is a problem with most record labels. “There are no contractual bonds or exploitations. We will only act as a promoting and marketing tool for them. That’s our dream,” says Gulati.