Manila, then Los Angeles. Los Angeles, then Manila. Ceej Frankera is an independent singer-songwriter who travels back and forth between Los Angeles, California, and Manila, Philippines. From singing in her college days to writing her songs, Ceej Frankera talks about it in her podcast episode with The Indiependent Collective.

The singer-songwriter talked about her experiences in the music industry—how she got started, the beginning of her songwriter journey, and how she feels about being an independent artist. 

Ceej started seriously pursuing music in 2017-2018, around the time when she began to write her songs. She shares that she’s always been a performer. As a child, she would always sing, then join different performing groups throughout her teenage years. She shares that she started doing it as a hobby when it came to songwriting. Then, she began performing in 2019. Gaining momentum, she already had songs lined up for production. Sadly, this got delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic, she got busy and started exploring music production with her cousin. Living together, they began to work on her first two singles: Record and Fly. Her third single, By Your Side, is her favorite song she’s released. The production for By Your Side took a whole year, which Ceej called “divine timing.” With By Your Side, she felt this song came out at the right time due to its relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic. She received messages from people telling her that the song perfectly captured how they felt, which is one of the reasons she is inspired to create music.

She realized that she needed to learn more about music production with songwriting. She learned a lot from her production team through the whole process of releasing her songs. In the future, she’d like to collaborate with more artists who share the same passion and mind as she does.

On signing with a record label, Ceej strongly feels comfortable being an independent artist. Discussing the benefits of being an indie artist, she shares that it gives her more freedom and autonomy over her music, from the royalties to the production. She compares being an indie artist to having a startup—while it may be a bit more challenging to access the right people, you are in charge of your art. She finds it highly stressful but also rewarding.

Lastly, Ceej Frankera gives her advice to aspiring artists: just do it. More importantly, start doing it for yourself. Music doesn’t have to be all business—it can be a hobby or a form of emotional release. Let yourself explore and be comfortable in your art. Then, you start to figure out where you want to continue from that point forward.

Listen to Ceej Frankera’s episode on Spotify here. You can check her on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube to stream her music.