An interview with ZipBox Media Vice President Paul Wright

Paul Wright - Friday December 9th 2011

Paul W. Wright III has been in the music industry for more than 20 years as a producer, songwriter and record company executive. He’s won Dove Awards – the top accolades in the Christian music industry – and a Stellar Award for gospel music. His musical background led him to the idea for ZipBox Media as a vehicle for musical artists to create their own web pages and sell their music online. Now he’s vice president for sales and marketing for ZipBox Media.

Q. What does a vice president for sales and marketing do?
A. My job is to basically market the product, to get as many people to know about ZipBox as possible by any means necessary. Whatever it takes – trade shows, one-on-one sales, group meetings, doing interviews like this. I run the customer service side as well. When the customer is set up with the product, I make sure it’s up and running right.

Q. The idea for Zipbox Media grew out of your experience in the music industry. How did that happen?
A. Over the years, I heard some of the complaints the artists had – artists who wanted to control their own destiny. There was no vehicle to do that. iTunes won’t let you do that. I wanted to make a platform where artists basically are signing themselves, where they could sell, market and distribute their own music and be included in SoundScan, which gets you tracked by Billboard. Of course, since then, ZipBox Media has expanded far beyond the music industry. Now our customers include churches, authors, retail sales – anyone who needs a website, especially if you want to distribute digital content.

Q. Did you ever have the experience of starting your own website before ZipBox?
A. Yes, as a label executive. I’ve had at least eight sites I can recall. It was expensive enough to have someone build a decent low-end site: two grand. If you want perks like a shopping cart, it’s another grand. And if you want to do anything, you have to call the IT guy. If you have time-sensitive news you want to put on your site, he says, “Give me two to three weeks.” Well, I don’t have two weeks.

Q. So you do things differently at ZipBox Media.
A. Right. With ZipBox, you are in control of your own website. You can update your own site any time you like, or add as many pages as you like without calling IT. It only costs $9.95 a month, and the initial site design is free instead of two grand.

Q. Your early music career really took off in Hollywood. What did you do?
A. I scored music for TV shows, wrote songs. I scored music for “Full House” for a number of years. I wrote theme songs for other shows. “Martin” on Fox – Martin Lawrence – I wrote that theme song. I got my first big movie gig with “Made in America” with Whoopi Goldberg and Will Smith. I did some of the music for that movie.

Q. You even did a little acting.
A. It was kind of cool I got to be in the movie. They thought I should be the person conducting the music I wrote. And you can catch me in some episodes of “Full House.”

Q. Are you still doing music?
A. Sure. I still produce, I still write. I’m still on the Dove Awards screening committee. All in the Christian marketplace. The biggest thing I’m involved in is Revealution. It’s a nonprofit organization I started with my wife. It’s about touching souls, and we do it through music. We just released our CD, “Revolution Worship Live.”

Q. You have a wife – any kids, dogs?
A. My wife Lisa and three kids, Cherish, Jordan and Nicole. We have a Yorkshire Terrier named Brewster. Our other dog, his name is Rocky because he’s a boxer.

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An interview with ZipBox Media Vice President Paul Wright