Big stars who came out of football

Chapter 42: Chapter 42: The Game of Capital

【USA Today】As the paper media with the largest publication volume and circulation in the United States, it not only has a huge number of subscribers in the United States, but it is also the first newspaper in the United States to launch an online newspaper subscription business.

In fact, many people do not know that [USA Today], which covers news markets in 51 countries, has a very complete and sound news gathering system.

As long as there are all kinds of news big and small, the journalists under [USA Today] must be the first few people to arrive at the scene.

But Barry Robin, the person in charge of this system, ushered in a big man who surprised him in Los Angeles today.

Edgar Bronfman Jr. walked into Barry Robin's office and without waiting for Barry Robin to say anything, Edgar Jr. opened his cigar box from Barry Robin's desk up.

Barry Robin was not unhappy when he saw a cloud of smoke deliberately blown onto his face by little Edgar~
Instead, Barry Robin raised his foot and kicked at little Edgar: "Hurry up and talk! I don't have as much time as you!"

"I signed a Premier League football player to be my singer. I need your help. Don't rush to reject me. The Warner Records I bought have lost money for two consecutive years. If Warner Records doesn't If there is no way to help me make a profit, I may resell him.”

As a powerful person in the editorial department of [USA Today], Barry Robin was surprised to hear that his college classmates took the initiative to say this, because whether he was in Universal Music or later started his own business, even in difficult times, he always I didn't take the initiative to ask him for a word. You must know that these words are very important for a big boss.
It can be said that Barry Robin has a certain understanding of the plight of his old friend.

Although Warner Music has been developing smoothly in terms of financial status and international music business with the help of this old friend in recent years, if this performance is placed in the past few years, Warner Music may be comparable to Universal Music in the past few years. Like a record, the stock has a daily limit, and the market value has a new high every day.

But the problem is that the revenue share of the offline CD record market has dropped for the first time since last year!

In Western countries, if you want to make your business bigger and stronger, it is impossible for anyone to escape from the circle of [capital].

So is the music~
If he didn't have so many large record companies and the capital behind them to operate "music", I believe there would not be too many people rushing into this circle to become big stars.

After all, composers and singers need to eat, and they can't afford to eat, so where does the work come from.

This is the situation Warner Music is facing. 55% of Warner Music’s annual profits come from the records sold by its signed singers. If Warner Music’s financial report falls again this year, it means that Warner There is a possibility that he will be abandoned by the capital behind him!

"Have you found the problem yet?"

Edgar Bronfman Jr. was playing with a string of prayer beads that he took out from nowhere, and occasionally there was a sound of "zi la zi la" beads colliding: "I got a set of prayer beads about iTunes online some time ago. music data."

"If the news is correct, I think I have probably found the problem."

"iTunes music as of July 2006, the platform's online music sales data exceeded 7 million US dollars, and the number of purchases reached 1000 million person-times."

"And there is YouTube, which has exceeded tens of millions of users. Because you are the first media in the United States to start online media news business, the impact on you may be very low, but our entire industry has already felt an Internet company without copyright awareness. pressure on us."

When Barry Robin heard what his old buddy said, he immediately straightened his waist with interest: "So it's true that the founders of YouTube are going to sell to Google? Are you working together with the Film and Television Association? Putting pressure on those four young men?"

Little Edgar Bronfman raised his hands with an indifferent expression. When Barry Robin saw that his old friend did not deny it, he immediately showed an "I understand you" expression.

In fact, the relationship between the European and American music industry and YouTube has always been somewhat delicate, which has a lot to do with the rise of YouTube in the early days.

As a product between the Internet and TV, YouTube has had the dual characteristics of UGC mode blessing since its birth - extremely low content cost and extremely poor copyright protection. In the first few months when YouTube was popular, it was even more internal. Foreign troubles continued.

The internal worry is that YouTube is sandwiched between TV copyright owners, viewers and advertisers, and it is difficult to balance the tripartite relationship~
The external problem is that because UGC users disregard copyrights, YouTube has difficulty fulfilling the regulatory responsibilities required by TV, radio, and record companies, which has repeatedly caused dissatisfaction among many parties.

With the pressure from many parties, YouTube has not clarified its own profit model, and YouTube, which suffers from no new funds, has to commit itself to Google and seek Google's asylum.

"It seems that you already have a new idea, tell me, what is your plan?"

Little Edgar Bronfman saw that his friend had no objection to him, so he took out a document from his briefcase and threw it on the table for Barry Robin to read.

"Sony Online has launched its own online music platform. I don't know why. Sony Online has invested nearly 4000 million US dollars in music copyright repurchase and traffic promotion. Sony Online has not made any waves."

"I analyzed it seriously, and I wondered if it might be that Sony Online didn't resonate with users to some extent."

"I just happened to see news about Claire on YouTube. This person is very interesting and very unique. Not only is he a player, he is also a music composer, and his songs are very interesting, so I plan to focus on He came up with a hunger marketing campaign to drive music downloads for other products on my platform and awareness of the platform.”

"Just now, Claire's fans on YouTube have exceeded 270 million. If I plan well this time, it may be possible to attract a wave of their traffic from YouTube. After all, there are nearly 1000 million users, and I am also very greedy. ah."

"Your script is good. I suggest that if you go bankrupt in the future, you can go to Hollywood to become a director or register as a screenwriter."

"I asked Spielberg for help with the script." Barry Robin looked at the document with an unsatisfactory expression.

(End of this chapter)