Host Lea Strickland talks with millennial entrepreneur Paul Loeb founder of DropTrack, a file-hosting service providing simple tools for artists and producers.
Paul’s bio:
Paul Loeb is known as a young, charismatic, tech and business savvy self-starter, president of indie record label, and now founder/CEO of the new artist-friendly music platform called DropTrack.
DropTrack is an innovative file-hosting service providing simple tools for artists and producers, has been playing at the intersection of music and tech since his age was in the single digits.
DropTrack’s pioneering founder has always been a music-consuming self-starter. Loeb describes himself as “a big nerd” who’s been programming websites and apps since the promising dawn of the 21st Century. Add that to playing piano, clarinet, guitar, and trumpet—plus a keen ear for what drives dance parties wild—and you’ve got a Renaissance Man for the post-Pro-Tools world.
Loeb began his career by making himself valuable to tech-needy neighbors in Aurora, CO. Starting in 1997 at age ten with his first start-up, Paul’s Computer Basics, he made house calls teaching fundamentals and fixing problems. Clients included grandparents, elderly neighbors, and a neurosurgeon. “My mom drove me to people’s houses and sat in the living room with a book” he remembers. “I started by charging $10/hour –which was a lot to me, but to an adult it was a huge bargain. Eventually I raised my prices to $20/hour. All these years later, my mom says she should have gotten a percentage of my earnings!”
Loeb had his first taste of making commerce flow more smoothly online when a neighbor’s hockey equipment store needed a website, so he created thehockeystore.com. He later hosted a web server from home called LoebNet. His mom searched for computer classes to keep him interested but couldn’t find any that challenged him and/or allowed 13-year-olds to attend. Loeb relates, “In the long run, my Mom says I just figured everything out on my own.” Now Loeb is figuring out how to capitalize on digital music’s evolution, continuously evolving his approach in the era of free-floating music files and overabundant digital data.