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In fact, Zhou Buqi, the new secretary, didn't bring any of them with him on this business trip.

On this business trip, a very important thing is to get married.

The fewer people who know about this private matter, the better.

However, during the National Day holiday in October, Zhou Buqi still arranged travel visas for them, and asked Sun Wanran to take them to Hawaii. They even got a luxury yacht for them.

Zhou Buqi traveled from South Korea and the United States to the United Kingdom, Germany, and then to Cyprus to hold talks with the team of outfit7, the developer of the "Talking Cat" game.

A one-time asking price of US$620 million!

Of that amount, $400 million is in cash.

This is the weakness of a small country with few people, and its negotiation ability is relatively poor.

If it were a game studio in the United States, it would have a much stronger backbone and extremely strong bargaining power. First of all, the United States has such a big market. As long as the product is good, you don’t have to worry about selling it. Secondly, there are many game companies in the United States. If you don’t sell to Changyou, you can sell to other companies.

outfit7 is a small company in Cyprus. Although "Talking Cat" is very popular in the market and they also launched "Cat Family", there are still huge risks at the operational level.

The simplest one is that there are too many games on the market that imitate "Talking Cat". There are too many imitations. With Outfit7’s own strength, it doesn’t have the money or energy to file an intellectual property lawsuit.

Selling to a big company is the best option.

After some communication, the negotiation was more pleasant.

Mattrick confidently guaranteed that he would be able to take down outfit7. As Zhou Buqi’s appointment as Changyou’s chairman of the board of directors, he would have a good start as Changyou’s CEO!

At the same time, Ziweixing International also succeeded successfully, buying the knowledge service product Knol from Google for US$9.5 million, including a 19-person team behind the product.

However, this is nothing compared to the real blockbuster deal.

On October 12, Google officially announced that it had completed its acquisition of Twitter for a total price of US$20.027 billion. There is no doubt that this will be the most shocking transaction of the year.

Zhou Buqi, who got the news, was having a family gathering on a private island in Greece. This is a small island borrowed from Buffett. The family vacations here. My parents, Aunt Liu and my sister are also here.

Here, Zhou Buqi quietly held a small family wedding with Sister Bao.

The moment she saw her daughter put on the wedding dress, Aunt Xue burst into tears.

Zhou Buqi almost shed tears.

Wen Zhixia and Shi Jinglin may have agreed upon it. They walked over to each other and pinched him hard, one by his arm and the other by his waist.

Zhou Buqi felt guilty and had to put on a smile, saying that although he and Sister Bao had a wedding, he would spend the wedding night with them, which earned Shi Jinglin a big eye roll, as if no one cared about it. .

After the wedding, Boss Zhou went on a one-month vacation.

There is a very important task, which is to win over Shi Jinglin and try to have a child. If possible, it would be best to bring Senior Sister Zhen Yu along with you.

When it comes to vacations, Europe is more comfortable.

There are many countries with rich culture and long history. Just go to any place and you can see hundreds of years of history, which is more suitable for leisure and vacation. Zhou Buqi mainly stayed in Europe.

When there is a Manchester United game, I go to watch the game at home, and then fly back to the European continent.

During this time, he plans to visit all mainstream countries in Europe.

However, work is also indispensable.

When I arrived in Sweden, I was stopped by Daniel Ek, the boss of Spotify.

This guy is an Arsenal fan, and he complained when he came up. In the last round of the league, Manchester United defeated the opponent with a score of 3:0 in an away game.

This troubles every gun fan.

Arsenal is now burdened with debt and has to sell core players every year to stay afloat, which has led to a serious decline in the team's performance. Let alone competing for the championship, it would be good to keep the top four and win the Champions League.

Zhou Buqi followed Ning Lu at Spotify's headquarters and laughed with him, "You can change your support to another team. If you become a Manchester United fan, I will give you a jersey signed by all Manchester United players."

Daniel Ek was speechless.

After the pleasantries, we got down to business, which must be related to Spotify.

Three things in total.

One, financing.

It’s easy to say that in the previous rounds of Spotify’s financing, Ziweixing was fully involved, and had the priority and lead rights for further investment. Spotify has basically been locked into the “Ziweixing” series.

Second, Daniel Ek wants to push Spotify into the domestic market.

Zhou Buqi didn't agree with this idea, "It's best not to do this."

"We can cooperate with Ziweixing."

Daniel Ek knew that Ziweixing has a music product called "Weidian Music", which is very well-known in the domestic market and is second only to QQ Music.

But he believes Spotify should be better.

This is a world class product with more music rights.

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and asked him to put down this idea. He didn't understand the domestic Internet market at all, which was completely different from Spotify's overseas strategy.

Moreover, QQ Music and Weidian Music are already very good and can meet the needs of domestic music lovers. There is no need to cooperate with Spotify.

As for those foreign music copyrights that are only available on Spotify but not on QQ Music or Weidian Music...

It can only be said that Daniel Ek is overthinking and does not understand the domestic environment at all.

First of all, domestic music lovers rarely listen to foreign songs, and even less popular songs. Therefore, QQ Music and Wedian Music mainly compete for the copyright of Mandarin songs, Cantonese songs, and at most some Korean songs.

This can basically satisfy 99% of the audience.

Spend less money.

It doesn’t have to cover almost all song copyrights like Spotify, and it has to take care of various languages ​​around the world.

As for domestic listeners who want to listen to foreign songs, but QQ Music and Wedian Music don’t have copyrights... it’s even easier, just go online and download pirated versions. Daniel Ek thought this would become Spotify’s competitiveness, but that’s not the case at all.

On the contrary, this will become Spotify's biggest weakness!

Ten years later, Spotify has nearly 200 million global users and is still losing money, but some well-known domestic music products are making a lot of money.

The main reason is copyright.

Spotify wants to purchase all genuine copies.

Domestic music products actually only need to purchase the copyrights of most mainstream songs, and there is no need to own the copyrights of unpopular songs. Whoever wants to listen can just listen to pirated copies. A product that can meet 90% of needs is enough.

In this way, the expenditure on purchasing copyrights can be greatly reduced.

With reduced expenses, profits can be generated.

And this is also related to the third point that Daniel Ek said, "Podcast products are very popular recently. This is a trend."

"podcast?"

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows.

What kind of trend is this?

At the beginning, Williams and Jack Dorsey started their business mainly because they wanted to make a podcast product, but they tried it many times without success. As a result, while doing it, I found that the Twitter created by Dorsey had a chance to achieve great success, so I simply gave up podcasting and started Twitter.

Daniel Ek said: "It's an audiobook service."

"Ah?" Zhou Buqi twitched the corner of his mouth, "Is this okay?"

Daniel Ek sighed, "It's really difficult for Spotify to make a profit. I finally collected some membership fees and advertising fees, and all of them were handed over to the upstream copyright company. For more than half a year, I have been studying the platform of Youshuo The economy needs to have a 'self-operated + third-party' theory, which I think is very good."

Zhou Buqi smiled, "Of course, there have been many practical demonstrations. If nothing else, once Netflix's self-made dramas... such as "House of Cards" are launched, the stock price will inevitably skyrocket."

Daniel Ek nodded, "I agree, so I think Spotify should also have certain self-operated products. If it is all third-party music, any revenue will have to be paid royalties, and it will be difficult to generate profits. But even so , many artists and singers are still complaining about too little income, as if we made money from them."

Zhou Buqi opened his eyes wide, "So you want to make an audio book?"

This train of thought is really exciting.

Spotify is now a music platform, and it is almost impossible to operate on its own. It would be too big a leap for them to make their own music.

Netflix can produce self-produced dramas, but Spotify cannot produce self-produced music. This is mainly determined by the nature of the industry.

The film industry is relatively fragmented, with too many film companies, including thousands in Hollywood alone.

The music industry is too concentrated. The four giants, Sony Records, Universal Records, Warner Records, and Top 100 Records, have almost monopolized the entire market.

This resulted in all the singers being signed to the four major records.

Even if Spotify wanted to operate on its own, it would not have the resources.

It is really difficult to carve up profits from a monopolized industry.

Therefore, Daniel Ek came up with another idea - audio book service.

It is too difficult to make music, but it is too easy to make audio books. There is almost no threshold for this thing. Just buy the audio copyright of the book, and then find someone to record it.

In the global book industry, sales of paper books and e-books are divided into royalties based on sales volume. However, in adaptation rights, it is generally a buyout model, with at most one net profit dividend added.

Net profit dividend means that if profits are generated, a profit dividend of 3% or 5% can be given. If there is no profit, no dividend will be paid.

This is too friendly.

The copyright is bought out and kept in one's own pocket, and the money earned does not need to be handed over to the upstream copyright dealer. The bulk remains in one's own pocket, which is equivalent to Spotify's self-operation.

However, is this business reliable?

Zhou Buqi is really unsure.

He didn't know much.

The only information I have is about some audiobook products in China in later generations. Some of them are quite popular. As a result, each one is more popular than the other. The little money earned cannot support so many audiobook readers. They are all reading endlessly. of losses.