INDIFY-ASSISTED SEB GOES VIRAL WITH "SEASIDE DEMO"

Independent act SEB is making waves at Spotify and TikTok with his latest track, “seaside_demo.” The song exploded on TikTok when SEB executed a clever and seamless mash-up of his song with Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar.” That sound has since been used in more than 300k videos.

SEB, whose vibe could be described as Kid Cudi-meets-Lil Nas X over light-rock guitars, is currently the only indie artist featured in Spotify’s pop flagship playlist, Today’s Top Hits, having graduated from its Pop Rising. After scoring that major add last Friday, SEB debuted in the Top 10 on Spotify’s Global and U.S. Viral charts today.

Playing a vital role in SEB’s development is the discovery platform indify, which serves as a deal-making hub, connecting indie acts with biz executives through simple, artist-friendly contracts for financial backing, similar to the tech industry’s angel-investor deals. Co-founded by Shav Garg, Connor Lawrence and Matthew Pavia—with funding from startup investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian—indify delivered a game-changing assist to SEB that escalated industry buzz and support for the platform.

Golden Kids Group management company boss Nick Mueller (347aidan, Ant Saunders) connected with SEB and his team through indify to provide funding and strategy. Meanwhile, Spotify had begun to champion SEB’s development as well.

"We first discovered SEB almost a year ago via our playlist-submission tool," said Spotify Global Hits Lead Becky Bass. “We loved 'Boys Don’t Cry' and placed it in New Music Friday, lorem, Fresh Finds and other playlists. Since then, we’ve closely followed SEB and were especially excited given the ubiquity of a snippet of “seaside_demo” online. As such, we supported it quite heavily upon release and quickly graduated the track to larger pop spaces, including Pop Rising. With the song growing day over day, along with great playlist performance, we made the move to add the track to Today’s Top Hits last week.”

With support from Mueller, indify and Spotify, SEB is now the focus of a signing derby. He’s repped by manager Eric Panganiban and attorney Richard Grabel of Davis Shapiro Lewit & Grabel.