Feisworld Podcast Ai Ming Oei: From High School Singer to Mingue and 7-Million Downloads on Spotify Intro 0:00 Welcome to the Feisworld podcast. Engaging conversations that cross the boundaries between business, art, and the digital world. Ming 0:24 It would be amazing if we could take care of all the artists, but you have to be an entrepreneur for sure. And you have to be with passion, and you just got to love what you do, otherwise, I'd start doing something else. It’s still my creativity, but with the right partners, it gets in the right playlist. It's a difference of millions of plays on Spotify. It's quite hard to get everything in place, to have it perfect, to have it be a success. It can be arranged. For me it's creating really a lot of output, trying to make the best product every time. Now I also write taking into account the label, the DJ, the audience, but still not losing my own authenticity. I just I need to be myself but I also can’t just be myself. You can find your way. You just have to be open for a lot of things and thinking solutions, but it's about changing perspectives, really. Fei Wu 1:37 Hello, welcome to another episode of the Feisworld Podcast! I am your host Fei Wu. Today I have Ai Ming Oei on the show with me as a guest. Ming is a singer and songwriter formerly known as Ming’s Pretty Heroes. About two years ago, she signed a record release with EDX, and she collaborates with musicians such as Mike Candys, Mathieu Koss and always working on more things and writing more songs. Originally from Rotterdam, Holland, we cross paths at Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Maine. Imagine that! I remember her as a fearless 15 –year- old Dutch singer. Among dozens of international students who came to the US with a list of few others, Ming was the only one from Holland, yet she quickly made a name for herself singing in English in front of 600+ American kids. I thought it was ballsy, which makes her a perfect candidate for Feisworld podcast, a collection of my mentors and friends who, without an exception, use bravery, insights, creativity to challenge the status quo to make a life of their own. Ming and I had a lot to catch up on because it had been 16 years since I last spoke with her after spending just nine months at Fryeburg before returning to Rotterdam. Ming didn't give up on music. Instead, she continued to take lessons in piano, singing and eventually majored in music in college. If any of you are listening to this from Fryeburg, a big shout out to our beloved high school that truly enabled that Ming’s career in a very significant way. Way before we had Facebook Live and other live broadcasting software at our fingertips, Ming was doing all of that on her own with her bands and putting videos out on Facebook and YouTube, often without background music (what's that called again? Acapella?). And sometimes she plays the piano while singing her songs. In her own words, she wrote a lot of songs and was always in the creative process. Someone who recently started pursuing a creative process, I can tell you firsthand that it is much easier said than done. No joke, some days can be quite painful. I couldn't let go of an opportunity to ask me about her creative process, how she records her album, how she releases them into the ether, working with her band and producer. We also dove into details of music as a business just like every other business. Ming learned how to navigate around it, no easy task. Her song “Riverbank” now has over 6 million downloads on Spotify, alongside a few other popular ones such as “Make believe”, “Bigger than this”, and Ming writes her music in English rather than Dutch. You will learn a few interesting things about the music business overall, and how it works in Europe. If you liked this episode, please consider subscribing to the Feisworld podcast. It takes seconds, I promise. You can do this easily via the podcast app on your iPhone or an Android app such as Podcast Addict. One of the busting gifts I could ever ask for this holiday season is if you could consider writing us a quick review on iTunes. Interviews with our podcast’s guests go deeper than just their professional successes. Topics include hidden origin stories, counter-intuitive learnings and personal motivations that help to humanize guests in a way many other interview-style podcasts do not. The episodes can serve as a way to inspire you to overcome some hardships in your life or they can just help you appreciate the winding path we take over the course of our lives. Thank you so much for spending your precious time with us. Without further ado, please welcome Ai Ming Oei to Feisworld podcast! Fei 5:58 I remember meeting you for the first time at Fryeburg, those 16 years ago. Yeah, 2000. I'm not sure if you remember, but you were at the student club. There was like a basement area where all the international students came together. And I remember you're walking through the crowd and everybody turn their head. There's part of my own observation - you're clearly very beautiful, yet you've never really made it your trademark as to, you know, something that you talked about or took advantage of. And you know, from my own observation, what I was really impressed about is back then, at a young age of 15, you were perhaps the only person from Holland in this house, yet you clearly quickly drew a following of new friends who were almost like family to you. And you were getting up on stage at a private school in the US in a middle of nowhere in Maine, Fryeburg Academy, and singing. That was just something I'll never forget. You know, I think in many ways, it kind of changed my world to say, wow, it's really daunting to be young and to be in a foreign country and yet singing. Ming 7:33 Maybe because you were two years older, you had a different experience. Maybe I seemed fearless. I was fearless. But I was more naive. I had the perfect personality to just step into this new world and see what's out there. And oh, hey, there's a lot of music nowadays. There's a lot of theater. Love it. Fei Wu 7:50 You weren't scared at all when you were there? Ming 7:54 No. I don't know why. You know, what did happen, though, because this is a sign of that I was quiet and maybe a bit naive, was that I kept getting lost. And you remember how small the building was. But you could go into the right wing or left wing. And then there was history somewhere down there. And I just couldn't remember where it was and kept getting lost. Like, wait, this is the football field? No, no, I have to go here. This is the Student Union. Yeah, yeah, I guess, there was for me, like, searching out new friends, but also I wasn’t really thinking [laughing]. Fei Wu 8:29 15 is interesting. I recently interviewed this teacher who is in her 80s, and she's been the teacher her entire life. And she told me, being a high school teacher, her favorite students were 10th graders in the US, which translates to the exactly 15. And, you know, she said that's an age when you're fearless, and you're a little bit naïve, and you're just discovering who you are as a person. So I feel very lucky to kind of have witnessed and met you at that time for only nine months. I was witnessing exactly that phase of your life. Ming 9:04 Yeah, you were. I remember this particular thing that I was 15, so sophomore year, and I was only there for a year, so it was definitely sort of party-awesome for me. And I remember there being other sophomore saying, oh, but you seem older, you seem like you're a senior, seem like you're 18. And then I started thinking like, maybe this is just a difference between the Netherlands and America at the time. Because I also noticed in America, we have one level of schooling for everyone and in Holland, it is already divided up. So there are several levels and, I guess, it has a different effect on people. I mean, in the end, we all will end up at the same station, I'm pretty sure. But…[laughing] Fei Wu 9:46 Yeah, you're right about the maturity level. We were roommates with one of your friends, so you came to visit really often, and I remember the exchange we had briefly about the difference between speaking, you know, Dutch versus German, and you said you could actually understand some percentage of that fairly easily. So, Ming 10:13 Yeah, well, I had it in school, so it was not a fair competition. But I couldn't understand Chinese! [laughing] Fei Wu 10:20 That's one thing I felt really proud of.