Rajshri Music is on a path of revival and it hopes to utilise its acquired digital expertise in the music space to build and grow. Rajshri Music's Rajjat Barjatya talks to Radioandmusic.com's Jescilia Karayamparambil about his plans for the label. He also explains in detail the way he plans to use his existing strength in digital to grow in the music business.

What is your vision for Rajshri Music?

When we started Rajshri Music in late 1990’s, we were more of an Indie-pop label. It was a time when Indie-pop was very popular. We had a number of successes then, but later we saw physical sales dropping. In ten odd years, a lot of investments have been made by other music label companies in the independent music space. Now, we find that we are actually coming back to the non-traditional form of music like live venue, artiste management and so on. Today, audiences can access music across the world; they are not restricted to just television. Most of the consumption today takes place on digital platforms worldwide. One can listen to Korean music and Brazilian music, and not just music in India. That is the beauty of digital. This is how we want to beautify the world in that manner. It is the time to look at independent music which is relevant for global audiences. We see ourselves as a bridge between Indian talents and global audiences. Digital platforms like iTunes and Youtube allow us to become the bridge. Talents need a platform that we provide -marketing, distribution, A&R skills, music producer, support needed online and offline. We want to give all of that to them.

How do you plan to use your years of digital expertise from other Rajshri businesses in Rajshri Music?

The days when music was sold on Cassettes’ and CD’s are gone. Our focus will be mainly on singles. The music and digital industry is now one and the same. There is no music industry if there is not a digital industry. Here, I am talking about recorded music and not live music and shows. The only revenue we have is non-physical that is digital. I felt with our strength in digital, if we were to integrate good quality music, we have a very strong distribution and networking platform online which will help us support and distribute. We need to use our expertise to make the music content available to audiences globally.

How do you plan to enter the regional space as you are looking at non film music?

We want to promote good music and talent. We are working in four directions. Firstly is ‘Rajshri Soul’ which is our devotional music side of the label, and we are producing wonderful Indian devotional spiritual ‘bhajans’, and recording them in a way that the raw feel still survives. Then, we have ‘Rajshri Kids’ where we have stories and songs for kids. The third is Folk- songs that generations have heard and sung to younger generations. We are looking at India as whole for folk music-it can be Pahadi songs, Haryanavi songs and so on. It should fit into the property that we are building. These platforms will be our means to enter regional space. English (Nine one records) is the fourth, and will be our chance to reach out to global audiences. These are the four verticals that we are working on.

Talking about regional content specifically, we want to take regional content mainstream. In ‘Rajshri Soul’, we have some Gujarati and Marathi content as well and it is aimed at devotional audiences.

What kind of growth are you looking at?

We are taking off this year, so I cannot put a number to it. We are looking at 2014-15 as the year when we come back into the music business. I expect to grow in 2015-16.

Give me a reason to venture into Artistes management?

We see opportunity in live music space. We would like to say that I would like to come from the artiste’s side. I see myself providing artistes and music for an event, rather than organising an event. It could be festivals like NH7 or events in venues like blueFrog, where we would want our artistes to perform. We are first and foremost a label company, music Production Company, publishing company, distribution company and artiste management company. We want to stay in the creative field.

We are currently approaching a lot of artistes but we have not made an announcement yet of how many; that will come soon. We are looking at starting with four or six artistes. We do not want to manage too many artistes, as we do not want any of them to feel left out. I do not want to sign 100 artistes and be unable to manage them. We are already in talks with some artistes and with others we are in the production phase. I would like to get on board younger talent as I am getting fresh content from there. We can add lot of value to younger talent who are experimental in nature. We look for talent that has an ambition.

Why did you decide to keep yourselves away from Bollywood content?

We decided to keep away from Bollywood because we see lot of potential in the non-film space. We have an ambition to reach out to millions of people through this space. Moreover, this space already has lot of competition.

You are aware about the Zee Music Company and Sony music deal, so will you be willing to forge a partnership like this in the future?

We have based our businesses on partnerships. We are very open to partner with any individual or company, where we can add value to each other. Partnership could be with a label company depending what they bring to us. For example, in the future if we decide to have physical copies for Rajshri Music, then I would partner with Sony DADC. We have spoken to Sony DADC, and when the time comes we will launch physical sales, for which we will need them as we might not be capable of doing it in-house. We have had a discussion with them and this is a possible future partnership.