I’m in Hollywood

Los Angeles, Firefly Studios.

In an office in the borough, Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Seagram Group, and Doug Morrison, CEO of Universal Music, were sitting around a bank teller-like machine with Eric, listening carefully. An engineer from Firefly Electronics explained the purpose of this machine.

The 'bank teller machine' in front of us is actually a digital music sales terminal, which Firefly Electronics named a 'mini music store'.

This machine was also a surprise brought to him by the Firefly Electronics team when Eric attended the Firefly Electronics Annual Conference a few days ago.

Because Eric only approved the digital music sales terminal research and development plan submitted by Firefly Electronics in the second half of last year, it has only been less than a year. Moreover, because of the original time and space, Eric had not heard of the emergence of digital music sales equipment similar to vending machines, so he did not particularly care about this plan.

But a few days ago, Eric was really surprised when he saw the prototype that Firefly Electronics took out.

Because this machine completely adopts the capacitive touch technology solution developed by Firefly Electronics, the whole machine does not have any physical buttons, and all uses touch screen operation. Moreover, the internal chip and operating system are also independently developed by Firefly Electronics on the basis of the accumulated tablet computer technology.

At the same time, the results of Firefly Electronics' research on the market prospects of the mini music store also made Eric pay more attention to this machine.

In the past, mp3 players were popular around 2005, when Apple opened the access of iPod players to Microsoft's windows operating system, which caused the explosive growth of the mp3 player market.

At that time, the popularity of the Internet in Western society was enough to support users to download digital music to mp3 players through their personal computers.

But now, the number of Internet users in the world is less than 200 million, and most of them are concentrated in North America, which has a total population of only about 300 million. The total number of Internet users of the other 5.7 billion people in the world is less than 100 million. Such a scale of Internet users is far from being able to support the rapid growth of the market capacity of digital music players.

Actually it is.

Last year, the second-generation fireflyer player was released in North America and Europe at the same time. Although the shipment of fireflyer players in European countries was comparable to that in North America at the beginning, in the next few months, due to the restrictions of the popularity of personal computers and the Internet, Fireflyer player shipments in the European region have slowed down significantly. In the whole year of 1998, among the 19.7 million fireflyer second-generation units shipped, only 7.7 million were in the European region with a population twice that of North America, and the other 12 million units were still digested by North America.

The most important reason for this is that a large number of European consumers do not have convenient channels to copy or download music to fireflyer players, thus greatly inhibiting their idea of ​​purchasing digital music players.

Although stimulated by the wave of new technology in North America, all countries in the world are sparing no effort to invest in their own information industries, but Firefly Electronics obviously cannot wait for the entire market to improve the basic hardware facilities in this area. The channel of music has also become an urgent problem for Firefly Electronics.

It is foreseeable that even if it is launched now, in a few years, with the further popularization of personal computers and the Internet, mini music stores will be gradually eliminated like public telephone booths, but as long as such a digital music sales from Firefly Electronics The terminal can be popularized,

There is no doubt that Firefly's fireflyer player will gain market advantages that other digital music player manufacturers are absolutely unable to match.

However, the biggest difficulty in promoting this device is the music copyright.

Firefly Electronics can privately let users crack the fireflyer player in order to download free music through pirated CDs or pirated websites, but this is absolutely impossible to put on the table.

Therefore, this digital music sales terminal can only sell genuine digital music content through the Yahoo Music Store.

Although the digital music content owned by Yahoo Digital Music Store has continued to increase in the past two years, the five major record companies in the world still have very little content authorization for Yahoo Digital Music Store. If the content problem of digital music store cannot be solved , this device wants to be popularized on a large scale, there will undoubtedly be many obstacles.

Inside the office.

After listening to Firefly's engineer explaining in detail a series of music purchase processes such as user login, selection, and payment, Universal Music's CEO Doug Morrison first spoke to the engineer: There is another very important question, I I just saw that you paid for the purchase through a Yahoo electronic account, but what if it is a passerby user who does not have a Yahoo electronic account?

Mr. Morrison, we also have a prepared solution in this regard, Firefly's engineer adjusted the display to the homepage of the digital store and demonstrated by pointing to an electronic button: Look, there is also a point card purchase option here. .In our plan, a large part of this device will be placed in downtown areas such as supermarkets and subway stations. Users only need to buy a point card in a nearby store and use the temporary account password given on the point card. Make music purchases. The basics are the same as a prepaid phone card.”

Doug Morrison nodded and glanced at Edgar Bronfman next to him without a trace. Although he did not show any special expression on the surface, in fact, Doug Morrison was inwardly. Surprised beyond measure.

The speed of promotion of fireflyer players has already caught traditional portable music player manufacturers and several major record companies by surprise. Doug Morrison has a keen premonition that once the digital music sales terminal in front of him is widely popularized, it will definitely be More completely subvert the existing structure of the entire record industry.

On the other hand, with the two powerful platforms of fireflyer player and mini music store, Firefly Electronics' influence on the entire record industry will also expand without limit.

At this point, the first thought in Doug Morrison's mind was that Universal Music could either reach an absolutely close and in-depth partnership with Firefly Electronics, so as to gain a more favorable position in the upcoming new industrial landscape. Or, resolutely resist Firefly Electronics' plan and do everything in its power to maintain the original order of the record industry.

From the perspective of a good professional manager, Doug Morrison actually prefers the former.

With the rise of the Internet industry, the record industry was hit by the impact of Internet pirated music last year, resulting in a decline in overall performance. It is already doomed that this industry will undergo earth-shaking changes. At this time, sticking to the rules will only make you fall into a more passive situation.

Although from the media to record companies, there is no shortage of criticism that fireflyer players encourage piracy. But in fact, many people are aware that the popularity of fireflyer players has not affected the spread of pirated music far from the bad degree generally described by the media.

In the final analysis, the impact of the record industry is due to the large-scale rise of the Internet industry.

Most pirated users are more inclined to download free music resources from music websites, and then copy them to CDs and play them with traditional music players. According to statistics, in 1998, in North America alone, the sales of blank CDs exceeded 130 million, which is equivalent to more than five times the sales of fireflyer players.

Blank CDs cost less than $1 compared to the average $20 genuine.

Moreover, there is absolutely no channel to curb piracy in this regard. At this time, the fireflyer player, which has been widely criticized by the industry as an accomplice of pirated music, is precisely a platform that can turn Internet digital music from pirated to regular channels.

However, although there are already a series of calculations in his heart, it is impossible for Doug Morrison to make this decision alone, and everything depends on what the boss Edgar Bronfman means.

Next to Doug Morrison, Edgar Bronfman did not raise any doubts. He pretended to think for a moment, and then directly asked Eric on the opposite side: Eric, how many units Firefly Electronics plans to put in? This kind of machine to the market?

When Doug Morrison heard Edgar Bronfman's words, he immediately had the urge to cover his forehead.

What kind of problem is this, how many machines will Firefly Electronics put in, is it related to Universal for the time being? We should be more concerned about how Firefly Electronics intends to cooperate with Universal Music!

Eric was very patient, and replied with a smile: For the first batch of 10,000 units, we will focus on installation and testing in Europe. If the results are good, the launch scale will expand rapidly.

Although he felt that he should not ask this question, but after hearing Eric Williams' answer, Doug Morrison began to make a quick calculation in his heart.

10,000 units.

This number is definitely not too much, or even too little.

It's just that in an international metropolis like London, England, with a population of six or seven million, if you want to complete coverage, five hundred machines may not be enough.

Moreover, in Doug Morrison's view, such digital music sales terminals should pay more attention to second- and third-tier cities.

Because the popularity of personal computers and the Internet in first-tier cities is often high, residents of second- and third-tier cities are also potential consumers of digital music players, but they do not necessarily have hardware and software facilities to obtain digital music resources. Throughout Europe, there are still thousands of cities large and small, which excludes the lower-level towns. Thousands of cities, 10,000 machines, each city may not be allocated ten machines, and there may not be as many bank teller machines in these cities.

Of course, these aren't issues that Universal should be considering, at least not yet.

Seeing that Edgar Bronfman was still talking, worried that he would ask any irrelevant questions, and even make himself passive, Doug Morrison hesitated, and said: Eric, We all know your intentions to show you this machine, so let's talk about your thoughts?

Eric nodded, gestured to the nearby sofa, led the two of them to the sofa and sat down, ordered the secretary to serve coffee, and said, Ed, Doug, we all know the current situation in the record industry. It's different from the past. It's just like the time when Hollywood encountered TV sets and VCRs. At that time, the entire Hollywood was facing a big enemy, trying to prevent TV stations and VCRs from infringing on the interests of the Hollywood film industry. The two sides were at a standoff for a long time. After a period of time, in the end, when Hollywood found that it was absolutely impossible to stop the other party, it was forced to choose cooperation. But the final fact proved that TV stations and VCRs not only did not harm the interests of Hollywood, but instead allowed Hollywood studios to obtain lucrative profits. Additional sources of income. The record industry is currently experiencing the same situation as Hollywood was, but it is more severe. Because PCs and the Internet are ubiquitous faster than TVs and VCRs were, and the cost and convenience of digitally pirating music It is also far lower than movies. Often just one person and one server is enough to cause the spread of hundreds of pirated music on the Internet. Therefore, you don't have much time to hesitate, once you miss the opportunity to establish a formal digital music sales platform , causing people to become more and more accustomed to free music on the Internet, and the entire record industry will come to an end.”

The corners of his eyes jumped a few times, and Doug Morrison interrupted: Eric, you are alarmist.

Is it an alarmist? Just look at the sales decline of the record industry last year, Eric shrugged and said, So, I mean, we should reach a cooperation as soon as possible to realize the regularization of the channel of Internet digital music. Only in this way can the record industry be saved before it collapses.

Edgar Bronfman also said again at this time: Eric, let's talk about your cooperation plan.

Of course, Eric nodded and said, Actually, the current sales model of the Yahoo Music Store is the cooperation plan I want to give. Universal Music will put its music resources into the Yahoo Music Store, and the two parties will share a ratio of three. Seven points, of course, you are 70%. In addition, regarding the release of records, the Yahoo Music Store also has a complete set of plans, you must already know this, with a three-month window period, newly released records, physical records Exclusively for three months, after three months, the complete digital record will be released, and three months later, the single will be sold separately. However, I would recommend Universal to adopt the sales model of simultaneous release of physical records and digital records. Currently, Firefly Records’ Most of the singers have accepted this distribution plan, and their income has not decreased, but has increased a lot.

Eric, if you only offer these conditions, Edgar Bronfman shook his head. I don't think we need to talk anymore.

Actually, I'm just introducing the two of you today to the mini music store just developed by Firefly Electronics, Eric smiled, We can discuss the specific cooperation plan and whether Universal Music has other requirements. Of course, our physical music store plan will not be delayed because of this. Firefly Electronics plans to release the third-generation fireflyer player in April, and will announce this plan at the same time and implement it as soon as possible. So, if we can both The previous cooperation, I believe, will be of great benefit to both Universal and Firefly.”