Meet Jesse Neo | Music Producer & Technology Expert

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jesse Neo and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jesse, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Having my own business and being my own boss have always been my aspiration. However, I didn’t just want to get paid. I wanted to use my innovation and creativity to improve a certain field. This is why I started a music-tech company called Gemtracks.

Even though I am a musician, I also studied Computer Science in college. In fact, I ended with a PhD where I invented new ways to use machine learning and data visualization techniques to analyse data. Upon my graduation, I knew I wanted to use the skills I obtained from my study and combine it with my passion, which was music.

So the first thing I did was see what was wrong with the music industry. My God, there were so many. Everything from the industry being difficult to enter, artists not being paid enough, to not being able to find the correct listeners for your music. Hence, Gemtracks’ first goal was to create a marketplace to buy and sell original industry-standard beats and instrumentals for artists to sing and rap their own lyrics to. The innovation was that every beat could only be sold once, and the ownership of the track gets transferred from the seller to the buyer, with a legal contract to prove it. The whole process is automatically streamlined.

When the pandemic hit, the Gemtracks’ beat marketplace suddenly became very popular. Producers from all over the world began signing up to sell their beats, and artists everywhere were being inspired to release their own songs from the beats. So eventually, I also launched new features to hire freelancers, book recording studios, and submit music to playlists.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The hardest part of launching the Gemtracks website was getting people to know about it, and also making sure the website was useful and easy-to-use. As I didn’t know anyone in both the music and technology industries, I relied on a lot of risks. These include spending more than 14 hours a day programming and developing new features on the website without knowing if they’ll ever be used. I also spent more than $100,000 on marketing while watching the number of visitors go down or not improve.

However, one thing I learnt was to keep going, regardless of what the current situation was. At the end, all it took was one music producer to sign up to the website, have an artist purchase one of the producer’s beat, and suddenly that was enough to prove the business model worked. And if one music producer and one artist would do that, it was apparent the numbers could be magnified.

I remember in 2021 when Gemtracks saw the number of visitors go from 1,000 to 10,000 overnight. It continued growing up until today, which is attracting more than 20,000 daily visitors from around the world.

After going through the toughest part of building Gemtracks, I am finally here today with a solid number of members. Now I get enough traffic to experiment with new products and also do surveys to see how Gemtracks can improve.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would defiantly take my friends on a road trip between West Hollywood and Santa Monica. Along these spots, you can spot thousands of innovative entertainment and technology companies and their headquarters. It is so inspirational to see these firms, while also being in a neighbourhood full of creativity, culture and acceptance.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
– Milana Leyboich for educating me about the music industry

– WeWork for providing me with a place to work and network with other professionals from and not from the industry, that were both fruitful regardless

Website: https://www.gemtracks.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesseneoofficial/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseneo/