We thought it was dead and gone… but ten years later, the 360° deal is back with a vengeance. It’s just taken another form, says Unicum Music’s founder
Streaming, social media and the live sector are increasingly converging to progressively erase the existing traditional barriers of music promotion. Basically, 360° as we defined it in the early 2000s is dead, but 360° in today’s terms is growing under our very eyes, it’s just we’re not calling it like that.
360.
It was a magic number and I remember it well : the top execs in the music business, back in 2005, were obsessed with it to the point of investing all their hopes and focusing all their energy on shaping deals that way.
The logic behind it was simple: piracy was threatening the very business model that got them there. Record sales were melting on the spot and the new generation didn’t care for the same quality of sound, they just wanted the music ASAP, even if that meant downloading it illegally. So even though there was a lot of wishful thinking along the lines of “surely-we-can-educate-the-masses-and-convince-them-to-become-reasonable-again”, the people at the top were taking no chances. They were leveraging their position as a power player in the industry while it lasted to muscle-in on any potential deals and get a piece of the pie anywhere, anyhow.
The legendary Robbie Williams 80 million pound deal in 2002 may have sounded crazy, but by 2005, noone was doubting anymore and the big players of the industry were completely converted.
Emily Gonneau 