Experimental rock and electronic artist, Jesse Neo, is a 23-year-old singer, songwriter, producer and composer that has been releasing music since 2017. Originally from Australia, he has since moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on his art while at the same time, accidentally launched a start-up in response to the gaps he saw in the industry.
“𝐼’𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑘𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑠𝑡,” 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑢𝑠. “𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛, 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐. 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑏𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑘, 𝑝𝑜𝑝, 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑘, 𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑝 ℎ𝑜𝑝 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠.”
“I’ve always seen myself as a daring and funky artist,” the Australian told us. “I mean, just listen to my music. I combined rock, pop, punk, electronic and even hip hop into a sparkling explosion of tones.”
After taking a few music production classes, Jesse paved his way into the music industry when he was called by record labels and internet media companies to compose tracks for them in La La Land.
“What happened during the first few months working professionally in the business really changed my expectation of the entire industry,” Jesse recalled. “I mean, there is still a lot of mundane tasks done manually. For example, I remember being on the phone and email with several clients discussing about my songs, my share of royalties, and the medium I would use to deliver my mastered tracks. Then there were awkward situations when the client didn’t know how to ‘go back’ to a folder inside a USB drive.”
With these issues, Jesse decided to create his platform, Gemtracks to buy and sell beats. With his quirky computing skills, he launched a simple website and posted some of his unreleased music and marketed them to music companies. To his surprise, sales began coming through after a few days. Each beat was selling for up to the price of $600.
“I think one reason that explains the reason behind the success of the website comes down to each beat being able to be sold only once,” Jesse told us. “The beat then gets removed and the copyright then gets given to the buyer. The entire transaction is done automatically and in seconds.”
After other musicians saw the benefit of Gemtracks, they encouraged Jesse to release it as a public platform. Today, several hundreds producers have signed up to the website and are making constant streams of income. These names include Milana Leybovich, I.Y.F.F.E, Beowülf and Lucas Gold, to name a few.
Now, Jesse Neo is with us to reveal two new features on Gemtracks. They are the abilities to hire freelance singers and book recording studios.
“I’m am hoping to turn Gemtracks into a destination where indie artists would be able to collaborate with other musicians, exchange skills and eventually release their music in the same way a major label would,” Jesse announced. “I would also like to take the opportunity to encourage those that have been thinking of being artists themselves to try joining the website.”
It seems, at the end of the day, Gemtracks will be seen as the playground and work station of musicians.
It is good to know that besides the buying and selling part of the website, there is also a free section on the website filled with educational resources to help aspiring artists. These materials come in the forms of videos, articles and even eBooks. One that really stood out is learning about how to get a song submitted into Spotify and into big playlists.
You can listen to Jesse Neo’s music on Spotify and follow him on Instagram.
