We were lucky to catch up with Oliver Sean recently and have shared our conversation below.

Oliver , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

I was 13 years old and joined a band of 30 year olds during my summer holidays while i was away from boarding school. To me it was just having fun and doing what I do best – playing the guitar and singing my heart out! All we did mainly was rehearse songs at the drummers house and were hoping we would do a gig soon.

Well summer came to an end and I went back to boarding school. I got back to my school rock band jamming with my mates in school when we had free time from our studies. BUT I then got a call from one of the band mates who told me about this festival that wants us to perform. It was a dilema, I had to get out of the baording school for that day!! One can’t really leave the boarding school unless its a family emergency – well we came up with a story about a family emergency (my Mom helped me, via a call to school director) ;) and they bought it :))

Next thing I knew I was on stage at a festival concert, rocking it out with a band of 30 year olds and everyone there was amazed seeng a 13 year old kid (who was great by the way even at that age). Got my first taste of what it feels like to be paid for having fun and being who I was meant to be – A Musician!

I have made a living ever since, ONLY doing creative work – be it performing, writing music, producing, filmmaking (specialised in music videos – which to me is like producing or writing a song) and consulting on the music business.

So yes, music is my life (that is also the name of the first song I ever wrote, when I was 11) :)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I recorded my first album during my late teens, in my bedroom, while I was doing my MBA. During this time I was touring and was featured on TV on a music show called showcase tv in London, I also then joined MTV in Asia and the Middle East for a stint as a VJ. My reasoning for doing the VJ stint with MTV was so that I could promote my music to the world – to me all I I was interested in, and obsessed with, was my music :)

Everything i did was with a goal to get my music out there. Even my BBA and my MBA – I remember doing all my projects for university based around the music business. This was a time when there were no music business degrees. So I made my own curriculum for myself while doing my business studies.

So that debut bedroom album that I made, which was called ‘I Like It’ went on to be nominated for ‘International Album of the Year’ by AVMax, which was a magazine/organisation related to pro audio based in that region. The album was nominated alongside some big names like John Mayer, Kylie Minogue, Third Eye Blind and Robbie Williams :) I believe my time with MTV and a music video that we made from a live performance during my UK tour, which did get airplay on MTV helped me achieve the success with my debut ‘bedroom’ album :)

Some amazing things followed after that, with my third full length album called ‘So Good’ being nominated for the MTV EMA’s, a pretty big deal for an Independent Artist (well a big deal for ANY artist really). By the way I stayed independent by choice. I tried being a major label act with BMG and Times Music after my first album, but realised very quickly that I would rather not let anyone else take control of my music. I believe this was the right choice for me.

Taking control of my music also gave me a Vh1 Top 10 for a music video I directed for my song called ‘Movies.’ this was the first proper music video I directed with a full crew, and I did that from ‘Front’ of the camera.

Soon after I worked on a song with world music fusion added to a very Mainstream pop rock song. That gave me my first Billboard chart hit. It was a song.called ‘Doing That (Time. Love. Happiness). The song was also selected as ‘Song of the week’ on BBC Radio in the United Kingdom. Again, I achieved all this being an Independent artist who wrote, produced, made his own music videos (which got airplay on Vh1 and mtv) and marketed it all himself (with his mom and close friends as his record label) :) If you are talented and have the drive, and you have just one person who believes in you in the beginning (at times believes in you even more than you do yourself) – you WILL make it :)

After my first Billboard chart success with the song Doing That, I was lucky enough to follow through with 3 more major billboard chart hits, very importantly, to me at least, was making it into the Billboard Blues Album Charts in the top 10 with major names that I grew up idolizing. The first Billboard blues album charts for me was with my album ‘Devil is Back’ which hit #8, and then again with my Covid lock down album ‘Garage Sessions Vol.1’ which was recorded in my garage in Leicestershire in the UK. That came in at #14. Billboard also.placed me on a special rising Artist Chart during the covid period, where I was at #6.

I guess after you have that one person who really believes in you, and if you are good at what you do, you can get thousands more believing in you and supporting you, so much so that they can take an independent DIY artist to the Billboard charts 4 times, take your album to the official UK Top 55 albums (i came in at #52 on the Official UK top 100 album charts) and have had countless iTunes and Amazon #1’s for my singles, albums and EPs. This is all down to my fans. Truly.

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

Social media and how it works, or what works really in regards to their ‘algorithms’, changes so quickly. What I think is most important, is it to be yourself and let people see a genuine side of you.

Of course you should promote your music/art on social media, but give your followers an insight into the real you. When they feel like they are seeing the real you, that’s when things click. I love surprising my followers by going live and making them feel like they are sitting in my living room while I play the guitar and sing for them, or give them a live insight into my band rehearsals, my recording sessions. All that kind of good stuff. This makes your fans feel closer to you, and in turn you fell closer to them

The way I started looking at social media and my online fans changed during covid.- I realised how many fans I really had, and how much they supported me. It’s my social media fans that gave me one of my Billboard chart hits, for the album Garage Sessions Vol 1, which in a way is a social media recording, kind of :)) The fans chose the songs, voted on the list of tracks, were part of the recording sessions, rehearsals, all of it.

Now I can’t really differentiate between offline fans and online fans – it’s one big family!

But also look out for the scamsters – ooh man! You get some dangerous people out there who will try to subscribe to your innercircle pages and then connect with your fans, who in turn trust these scamsters thinking they are part of the innercircle of hard core fans. My fans and I have grown together and my innercircle fans are like family – they literally protect me and fight for me like family would ❤️

I do see a lot of creatives trying to do things that might not be in their comfort zone, just because they are probaly trying to do what they have seen others do on social media. To them I say – stop it now and just do what feels comfortable to you, and be consistent. Keep making and sharing art that is the real YOU.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I believe one important thing that needs to change, in some countries, is what venues and clubs are allowed to do with up and coming musicians.

They exploit them, get them to play free, hell, I have even heard of venues charging a musician to play at their venue!! This is disgusting, and what upsets me the most is that organisations like unions for musicians and other groups that claim to support and help artists, do NOTHING to stop this. If anything I have seen these organisations lobby for the venues, while charging Musicians a monthly or annual fee claiming to fight for their rights. What utter crap!

What I would advice young and upcoming musicians is to report these venues and ban them amongst yourselves. Be a brotherhood/sisterhood and tell each other about venues that are taking advantage of musicians, and don’t play there. Yes you want to compete with each other in the musical landscape, but you should also look out for each other. That is what will help.you all.

It’s been way too long that this is happening to Musicians, who don’t even get minimum wage at times – and I say why minimum wage? You provide MUSIC, the most amazing thing in the world. See that you get paid for it the way a doctor gets paid or a lawyer gets paid, hell, I say musicians should get paid even more and get subsidised by the government!

I remember the ex prime minister of the UK stating publicly during covid that Musicians should retrain themselves with a new trade and give up their music! What a shame!!! . This coming from the government of a country that gave us the Beatles and Rollingstones and David Bowie and George Michael and Queen. I wonder what our musical landscape would have been if all of them had given up during a pandemic in their time and become electricians and plumbers (we would have had some great electricians and very good plumbing – that’s for damn sure).

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oliversean.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/oliversean
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/oliverseanband
• Linkedin: @oliversean
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/oliversean
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/oliversean
• Other: woatv.podbean.com

Image Credits
Wanda Alvares WOA International