Connecting Artists with Artists: A Conversation With Josh Wright, founder of Elite Reviews

Josh Wright is a recording artist/entrepreneur. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Josh has gained over 40 million streams and has been featured on Netflix and performed at Warped Tour. He’s a Full Sail University graduate with over 10 years experience in the music industry. In August 2020, he founded Elite Reviews which is a platform that gives upcoming artists the ability to get their song reviewed by established artists. He partnered with Artist Republik to bring his vision to life and they began development in September. Josh created Elite Reviews with the goal to connect upcoming artists and established artists in a structured platform that would benefit both parties. Elite Reviews launched in January 2021 and has been featured in Forbes and One West Magazine.

Gloria Wang (BT): Could you begin by giving us a little bit of your backstory such as your education and your early career? And how did your work experience coming out of college lead you to the recording and music industry? 

Josh Wright (JW): I've been doing music probably since I was 16. I used to play piano actually when I was like 12 or 13, do like little recitals, but never really enjoyed it because I just didn't like the part about being kind of forced into doing something. It was always my parents that really wanted me to do it, so I transitioned from piano to drums because my dad was a drummer. From there, I gave up on the instrument thing all together and started doing more lyrical making- writing lyrics and singing and getting into rapping. I did that all throughout high school, and then I switched high schools about in 11th grade. The new high school I went to had more of a music program behind the board: actual technical stuff about recording music, so that kind of sparked an interest. I just started again to be more obsessed with it and then decided to go to Full Sail University, which is in Winter Park, Florida to continue pursuing more of the behind the board stuff. It wasn't really a school to actually be performing or to do the more creative part. It was more behind the boards technical things, so I went to that school. It was a two year program for a bachelor's degree, so it was all year round with only like four weeks of vacation throughout the year stuff. It was a fun program because I was with a bunch of people that were in the same mindset as myself, as well as the majority of the curriculum was music-based. Obviously we had the core classes, but the majority of it was music based so I enjoyed what I was doing, even though the hours were long and the days were long.

I graduated high school in 2013 and graduated college in 2015. And then I moved back from Florida to my hometown to live with my parents for about a year. I was trying to decide if I wanted to move to New York to start pursuing more of the back behind the boards technical aspect of the music. I was still doing my own music on the side, but I didn't have any fan base, it was very small. I ended up kind of just getting in a relationship back home, so I stuck and got into recruiting for a while, so I worked my way up through a recruiting firm while doing my music on the side. I started off as a recruiter then got promoted to a client program manager, where I managed the recruitment of a specific company. I ended up getting pretty in depth with that; it was managing over 100 people.

And then around that same time my music started taking off a bit. I got some good exposure from music blogs, and the profits I was making from my music started increasing significantly to the point where back in 2019, I was making almost the same or, if not a little more than my salary job was with my music. So in 2019 I decide to move to Atlanta, Georgia. My job offered me a remote position to still work in Atlanta, Georgia and manage a company in Chicago remotely, so I took that position, just to kind of ease the transition and moving halfway across the country to still have the funds. 

So I just got more dedicated with the music part of things when I moved to Georgia, because I had more connections. Compared to New Hampshire, the music scene in Georgia is massive. so I just was doing a lot more music stuff and losing interest with my nine to five job I was doing slowly. I worked there for another year remotely and then in January 2020, quit my nine to five, all together, and then just slowly moved to the music side of things. And that was just 100% creating music; I wasn't doing any business stuff that I'm doing now. Just hundred percent focused on the music thing.

And it was doing pretty good. It wasn't obviously exploding or anything but I was able to live, pay my bills, and live comfortably off music. I got into clothing and merch, a clothing line, and sold some clothing. It then wasn't till the summer of 2020 I started just feeling stuck in a position where my music was kind of staying at a comfortable spot but wasn't going up, wasn't going down, and no matter what I released or what I what I did, it kind of just was at a standstill stream wise. I wanted to branch off. At the same time i'm 26 years old, so I wanted to get into doing more business stuff. Obviously I don't want to be only like a 30 year old rapper; I want to be able to have diversity throughout my career so that's when I was just kind of brainstorming things and what the industry needs.

And that is really what brought me to thinking about the review side. I have small artists all the time, reaching out to me, DMing me on Instagram, emailing me, asking me to listen to their tracks. It’s the same with producers asking me to review them or listen to their beats and give them pointers. So I was just thinking about a way to monetize that, and I'm familiar with Cameo. Especially with Corona, they're more popular now especially for “happy birthdays.” People can't really go out, so they're more popular now and it's a cool way to get people that look up to these celebrities to be able to feel like they have a connection with them through getting a personalized video from them. 

I found a way to implement that, instead of just saying “happy birthday” which is not really valuable. I mean it's cool to see but there's no real value in it. I bring that into a way where you're getting these videos from people that are mid to high tier celebrities, people that get on that you look up to, but provide real value that can actually help them out with their career and bring them to the next level. That's kind of the idea of Elite Reviews. And same thing for bigger artists; they've gone through the loop so it's not like a majority of these artists are overnight success. It takes a while to build up a fan base. It makes sense to be able to get paid for providing consulting  and reviews to these artists that are just starting out, and I was surprised, nothing has ever been created, like this before, especially with everything kind of going into the more social media side with COVID. It was  a cool opportunity, and I partnered up with Nick. 

BT: That actually answered my next question, which was how you came to this idea of Elite Reviews. Related to that, how are you attracting established acts as reviewers? I'd love to just get more into the business model.

JW: Basically, we started recruiting artists back in September, and it was all word of mouth. We didn't have any platform created; we didn't really have even a wireframe or anything really to show these artists, so the way I pitched it was describing how it is going to benefit them, making it as simple as possible and making it show how beneficial it can be for them as an artist. The majority of artists that are bigger do get lots of DMs from small artists or from producers, so it's not abnormal for them to get a ton of messages but not be able to answer the majority of them just because they're busy. A lot of these artists really liked the idea right off the bat, and it helped because my Instagram is verified. That was the ability to be able to get into these bigger artists DMs and be able to connect with these guys. Compared this to Nick and his team, who tried to do the same thing and recruit and have connections from doing his business music-business work. Since his account wasn't verified, it looked just like another fan reaching out; it was harder for him to get responses back, so it was lucky for me with that being verified. It gave me the ability to like get responses from artists, that I would not expect to respond back, because obviously I don't have a huge following. But they were like they did read my message, because they saw the verification and then they were able to like determine if that's something that they want to do. The majority of time they were interested in at least hopping on a call. And when we got them on a call, that's when we were able to really pitch it to them and really provide the benefits.

The main benefits for these guys where there's no contracts, no commitment requirements, and they get to set their own rates. So they decide what they want to charge, and then they get to keep 100% of whatever they said that rate was. Then Elite Reviews just adds a small markup on top of their rate, so I think all those benefits are really attractive to them, because they weren't getting money taken out of their rate. They didn't have to hit any certain criteria or certain review requirements to be able to stay on the platform. They obviously didn't have to pay to be on the platform or pay like a membership fee, so it was the gig model where you can pop on whenever you want. It's kind of like Uber for reviews like you hop on whenever you have time. If not, you can put your account on hold, like if you're going on tour eventually or working on an album, where you don't want to be bogged down with these reviews. You have that ability to just put your account on hold, so we really just gave the artist flexibility to do it whenever they want . At the same time it's just like it's only profit for them; even if they get like one or two reviews they're not having to pay for the site so it's only going to give them profit not not going to take away anything, so I think all that really started attracting artists. 

Once we got artists talking about it, we got our base of artists, and we were going to their related artists. The artist community is pretty close; I have a strong connection with many mid artists and mid to mid-high tier artists, so I have that connection with people. That had built over the years and we kind of grew together. It kind of goes around with the whole artist community, so once they heard about it, or we reached out to someone that might not know me personally, but they saw that we had an artist that they knew on the site already, they were able to talk to them and show that was legit. We gave them a list of our confirmed artists. That really just kept the domino effect going, so that's basically how we start getting artists.

BT: You mentioned that this idea of Elite Reviews really came about in the last year in 2020 and then also in 2021. Obviously, at the same time COVID has been impacting a lot of different industries. How has COVID really inspired or even involved this concept of Elite Reviews. In the same vein, when live music performances do slowly return, how do you think Elite Reviews will fit within the music industry?

JW: I think this is a great time to get in Elite Reviews, because most artists took a pretty big hit with Corona, such as with streaming. Back in March across the board, streaming went down. which was obviously surprising because streaming is a social media thing. I think, just because of everyone's routines getting messed up, such as they're not driving to work or going to the the gym, the streaming times got all jumbled, so it did bring streaming down. That obviously is profit for artists and then with touring and merch sales, it became harder to ship merch. A lot of our fans are overseas so it's harder and more expensive to ship merch. The same with touring, which got cut, so a lot of these artists did take a hit. They're looking for ways to make up for that profit loss, so that's why I feel Elite Reviews was a time for us to get into it. Obviously if we started it like few months earlier like closer to COVID, hit right off the bat, that would have been even better, but we started in September. Still artists are not being able to tour and make money, so I think that is a great time. 

And the reason why we had so much interest in the site, without having to really show people too much detail, was artists like thinking, “hey, I can make some extra money. I'm not touring, not doing much right now; I'm just releasing music.” I think that was a good way for us to get our jump start and get started building our artists. And I think artists were more inclined to really try to start promoting their Elite Reviews profile and try to get that extra income in, so I think that's how Corona helped us. 

And I think with touring. we might see artists not have as much time, especially when artists are touring and not being able to do reviews. I think, at the same time, we can continue to build this base and build our reputation for the next year, because I don't think touring is going to happen for probably another at least seven months to a year. Our goal is to start building that reputation, where we become a well known name in the industry, so when touring comes back strong and artists are touring, they are making enough money with our site because we're obviously building up a name for ourselves by having more traffic to the site. 

I think we should get to a point where we're having artists make enough money on the site where they want to continue keeping it into their monthly income. Despite the touring, they will keep it as still a way to make money. They can bring it down and not have to do as much but have enough profits from the site to want to keep it in their income. I think this is a good time to kind of really build up our sites reputation and make it a brand name like how Cameo is like everyone. The majority of people know the name Cameo. But I know a year or two ago, not many people knew what Cameo was. So we're constantly bringing in new customers and it is really attractive to these artists to keep it within their monthly incomes.

BT: Just as an entrepreneur, what has really surprised you about the process of piloting your own vision for a company, so far? Given Elite Reviews is under Artist Republik, how has your partnership with them shaped your view of Elite Reviews?

JW:  I just thought of all the reviews just one day driving home, and then  right when I got home I kind of typed in just a basic overview of what I was thinking on the ride home. I knew Nick from a while ago. He helped me book some shows back in 2017 so I knew he was starting Artist Republik, and their site really has a lot of tools that help artists. I thought that could be a good fit since they're always looking to launch new sites or launch new tools within their site. So I thought, Elite Reviews could be a cool tool. I didn't go to the opposite and go to school for business. I had an idea of how to do this, but a very light overview of what goes into it, compared to Nick. Nick went to college for entrepreneurship. He's been doing it since he was in high school so he's really has a lot more behind the business side of things, I have a lot more knowledge behind the music side and more of the artists view of things, so the partnership, really worked out perfectly because he had like the business side, and I had more of the artist side. It was a really good combination.

So when I created the site,  their team really nailed everything I was thinking about with Elite Reviews. And I just kept thinking about more things to add as the time went on, in order to like really make it into something that could be big. One thing surprised me, I think I just how fast they got into action. We talked about it; I think I called them at the end of August, and then they started development in the end of September, so we definitely kicked it into gear. I think the reason was that we didn't want anyone to steal the idea before we create it. We realized, it was something that had never been done before. Cameo was popping off, so similar websites were popping off. We wanted to make sure that we got something out before anyone else got something else.

I think, just like the things that surprised me were just how much went into building that business. Even though it was just a tool on his site, we treat it like building a brand new company where we went through all the development, going through all the social media marketing, and making sure social media was branded very well. I know for a fact that when I first started Elite reviews, I was like, “Okay, I could probably try figures out by myself.” But now looking at how many people were a part of creating Elite Reviews-- all the developers, all the people that helped out with the marketing and building social media, and then Nick, and then his investors helping to fund it, it definitely surprised me and how much went into everything. It would probably not have been created for another year or two if I was doing it by myself or trying to figure out everything from the ground up. I was lucky to have Nick to really help spark things, jump start things immediately, and get things going with Elite Reviews, without having to start from complete scratch and find investors or developers.

BT: My penultimate question, you mentioned that you have a lot of more of the insight into the music industry. In what direction do you really see the music industry evolving in the next five years, and is there any outlying trends that you're particularly interested in?

JW: Social media is going to be able to continue to have a big impact on the music industry. As you can see, with Tik Tok, artists can go from zero listeners to creating a viral Tik Tok video and then becoming millionaires in a matter of a month. So labels are looking at these apps like Tik Tok to find artists that could be gold mines, where they haven't been working for years, but they create viral content that is going to make a lot of money quickly. And it's a good way for these labels to sign these artists, which gives them a big advantage and then capitalizes on their viral songs and their viral like almost one hit wonders, at times. I mean there's artists that continue to make good songs and continue to grow their fan base. But a lot of these times, these are songs that are trending on Tik Tok and creating dance trends that really blow the song up massively until the trend stops. Then it slowly fades out, but I think the music industry is going to continue to have more push from social media, rather than the traditional slow climb up and and working your way up until you get noticed by label and the label is the one that pushes you. Nowadays, the independent artists can be pushed, and then blow up before the label finds them and then the label will come in and scoop them up, while they're going up to promise to continue to blow them up and stuff and continue their career. I think social media is a great label nowadays, and I don't think you need a record label, I think, with being independent, You can use those social media platforms and the viral content to be able to build yourself up. You really don't need a label for your career. You hear from all these artists, now that labels can definitely take most of the profits, especially if you're not touring and stuff, so I just feel like the music industry is going to continue to be more independent, over time. Artists are going to realize that and just stick with being independent. I think it's going to be independent and it would be nice to have more artists being able to hit their goals and reach their financial goals independently, rather than having to rely on advances.

BT: Awesome and, finally, to end the interview off on more of a light hearted note, is there any song that you would really use to just describe like the past year, both in general and then, also in terms of Elite Reviews launching?

JW: I'm just trying to think. I’ve drawn a blank. I don't know I can't think of one unfortunately. Can I get back to you?

BT: Yes. Thank you again, Josh, for the interview for Business Today.