We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Minnie Yang a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Minnie, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I wrote my first song in high school and had always been a creative person in many ways, for ex. I learnt how to draw, to cook, to knit, etc. I also had experience in acting in TV drama and singing original sound track for TV shows for the past, but regardless of all these experiences, I think the offset of my creative career as a musician started only last year, when I decided to write my own song and start learning music production.
Ever since getting into the industry from a more determined mindset, I definitely have thought of “wishing myself had started this journey earlier”, especially when you see other musicians 10 years younger than me being already well-known in the music industry while mine really just started.
It took me a while to realize something that i would like to share: I won’t be able to write the same music if life was different. Every piece of music had my stories, feelings and vulnerabilities in it, and it’s not the same without those stories I’ve experienced. So there’s absolutely no regret for having lived life the way i did before, therefore not worth thinking about “what if i started earlier”.
I wish if anyone ever considers getting into something new, in the creative field, just go for it if it’s what your heart says, don’t hold yourself back because you think “is it too late to start now” or ever compare yourself with others. People are at different phases of life and your passion deserves its own time.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi guys! I’m Minnie Yang, I’m a musician, content creator, product designer and I’m based in Toronto.
I write songs and publish them on all music platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, etc., and I also post my music related contents on social media. I have collaborated with TV shows from China’s biggest online drama platform called iQiYi and Youku, and had been honoured to sing their original sound track.
Apart from all these music works, I currently work as a product designer as well and I do all sorts of wireframing/prototyping/user testing throughout the day.
If i were to pick one thing that i’m most proud of, would be the ability to multitask different types of creative works, and be able to leverage what i learn from one format to something bigger in another. For ex. I design visualizations in 3D and illustrations for my own music works, and I write music for content creation short videos I make. The creativity in different formats nurture one another and inspire each other.
If you’re interested in the works I do, please feel free to visit my social media page (IG: voyouaulait) and portfolio site (www.voyouaulait.com).

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Currently I have 10.3k followers on a major Chinese social media platform called “Little Redbook” (i’ll refer to as XHS for short). Not sure if anyone who comes across this interview would know the platform, but it functions similar to just any other social media like TikTok or YouTube, and I’d like to share some common tips as a content creator who’s been trying to foster audience base for over 3 years now.
Among all successful content creators on XHS, my audience base is very very minimal, but I’ve been through stages of content creation that led me to where I am now, and i think it’s very important to share couple things.
1. Try to reach many social media platforms, but pick one you wanna focus on. For ex. YouTube vs. TikTok is essentially a bit different. YouTube prefers longer videos (although they have shorts nowadays too) whereas TikTok prefers short reels. Because the mindset of creating 2 different things would be slightly different, as well as ratio of screen, way of editing video, effects to apply…
2. Take effort to build your own character, develop your own style. It takes time to get to the right style of content creation and sometimes you try couple different ones until one of them reaches wider audience and attracts attention.
3. Show your true colour and make sure you’re happy with what you’re presenting. I once fell into the rabbit hole of following what other musicians are doing on social media but realize a lot of times they don’t suit me well. For ex. my first reel that got high amount of streams was me singing Disney covers, and streams performed well only on musical related contents, but I’m not quite a musical singer, more of a indie artist. So i decided to put in more time and present what I truly feel passionate about, and the audience still grew over time.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think it’s when people echo with what i create, and that they feel delighted, healed, or understood when they see/listen to my works.
A while ago I did a remix of a popular song from TikTok called “2 days into college” by Aimee Carter and had 33k likes. In the song I wrote a short paragraph to answer what Aimee was singing about her college anxieties and stress, and shared my life as someone who graduated 3 years already and working. The comments were very touching and people shared with me their stories being either younger than me, just at my stage, or already passed this stage of life and giving me encouragements too. Although it’s only a remix and not my own original song, it made me feel the power of creating and I’m so happy that my work made people feel encouraged and happy.
When i write my songs, it usually stems from a true story of myself or a phase of my mentality. But everyone when i finish writing it, i always knew it’s a message i want to deliver to my audience. So overall, as an artist, I think knowing that my music echoed with audiences and perhaps made their day too, that’s the most rewarding thing for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.voyouaulait.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyouaulait/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minnie-yang-804913139/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkzi-iKxTZ6OFpRJcPCbgUg
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/06xyyuDSYXG5vXxDqUnppy?si=_l9LT_nqSm2l52LSr5OtSA

Image Credits

Photographer: Lingzhe Ryan Zhu