If you are active in the music space, you may have heard of Gemtracks. It is a music-industry marketplace and subscription platform for musicians to collaborate, produce and market their songs. The aim of Gemtracks is to allow professionals such as music producers, studio owners, singers, songwriters and curators to work with independent artists and music companies to create and market new songs. There is also a feature where sellers can offer paid subscriptions to their customers for access to exclusive files such as loops and samples.
Besides being a marketplace, there are also many free resources available for the general public to access. These include a blog, a tool to find similar songs, and a tool to find songs based on topics.
Gemtracks has been featured in many international publications including Business Insider, The Daily Caller, Variety and The Huffington Post.
The platform was founded by DJ Jesse Neo in 2016 as a private online store to sell beats made by Jesse himself. The difference between his store and others is that the buyer gets the copyright ownership of the beats too, and that each beat can only be sold once.
The word “Gem” came to Jesse while he was on a bus in his birth country of Australia. It was a short word that was easy to remember and also induced a sense of exclusiveness and value, which Jesse thought summed up the unique product proposition of his store. The word “Tracks” was chosen because it was a general word to describe music and also individual songs, which Jesse sold.
In 2019, while working in Los Angeles, Jesse met singer and music producer, Milana Leybovich in a studio. Milana had worked for companies like Disney and FOX, and was even a member of the now-retired band, Nuthin’ Under a Million. The duo discussed their experiences and entrepreneurial goals, and immediately decided to partner together and turn Gemtracks into a global marketplace.
Within less than a year as the world was grasped by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gemtracks received substantial mentions in the media and saw its users exceed to more than 20,000 a day.
The original logo was the Gemtracks name in a thin and pointy font. The ‘M’ and ‘A’ are slightly italic and leaning to the left. According to Jesse, there was initially no reason for the italicized letters except that it looked nice and kind of jazzy.
As Gemtracks began to gain momentum and become an established brand, the logo was changed to include a symbol that could represent both a gem and the company’s name. A diamond was settled as the gem due to its global recognition of luxury, wealth and indulgence. To continue with its tradition of having thin and pointy lines, the letters ‘G’ and ‘T’ were made apparent within the distorted lines that made up the diamond.
The text portion of the logo was changed to include thicker lines to make it look more like an icon when viewed small, and only the ‘M’ was italicized to put a break between the words “Gem” and “Tracks” – however, it should be noted that its official name is one word, Gemtracks.
The logo can either be the diamond on its own, the text on its own, or both the diamond and text next to each other.
In both the original and new logos, the font was inspired by an existing font and then had its angles and lengths of each letter changed. Its default color is black, however it has appeared in many different colors including white and blue.