I’m in Hollywood Chapter 1101: Mini music store
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Los Angeles, Firefly Studios.
In an office in the administrative area, Seagram Group CEO Edgar · Bronfman and Universal Records CEO Doug Morrison are together with Eric, surrounded by a bank teller machine, listening carefully to the one from Firefly Electronics. An engineer explained the purpose of this machine.
The ‘bank teller machine’ in front of you is actually a digital music sales terminal, and Firefly Electronics named it ‘mini music store’.
This machine is also an unexpected surprise brought to Eric by Firefly Electronics when Eric attended the Firefly Electronics Annual Conference a few days ago.
Because Eric approved the research and development plan of digital music sales terminal equipment submitted by Firefly electronically in the second half of last year, it has been less than a year now. Moreover, because of the original time and space, Eric has not heard of the appearance of digital music sales terminals similar to vending machines, and he did not pay special attention to this plan.
But a few days ago, when I saw the prototype taken out by Firefly Electronics, Eric was really a little amazing.
Because this machine completely uses the capacitive touch technology solution developed by Firefly Electronics, the whole machine does not have any physical buttons, and all use the touch screen operation. Moreover, the internal chip and operating system are also developed independently by Firefly Electronics based on the tablet computer technology that the company has accumulated.
Furthermore, the results of Firefly's survey on the market prospect of 'mini music store' also made Eric pay more attention to this machine.
In the past history, the popularity of MP3 players should have been around 2005. Apple Inc. opened the access of IPod players to the Windows operating system of Microsoft, 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 from their own personal computers to MP3 players.
But now, the number of Internet users in the world is less than 200 million, and most of them are concentrated in North America with a total population of only 300 million. The total number of Internet users in the world with another 5.7 billion people is less than 100 million. This scale of Internet users is far from being able to support the explosive growth of digital music players.
It's actually the same.
Last year, the Fireflyer 2nd generation player was released in both North America and Europe. Although the shipment of Fireflyer players in Europe countries was comparable to North America at the beginning, in the next few months, due to the scale of personal computers and Internet users Due to the restrictions, the shipment speed of Fireflyer players in the Europe region slowed down significantly. In the whole year of 1998, among the 19.7 million units shipped in the second generation of Fireflyer, the Europe area with twice the population of North America only accounted for 7.7 million units. In addition, 12 million units were still digested locally by North America.
The most important reason for this is that a large number of Europe consumers do not have a convenient channel to copy or download music to the Fireflyer player, thus greatly suppressing their desire to buy digital music players.
Although stimulated by the new technology wave of North America, countries all over the world are making every effort to invest in their own information industries, it is obviously impossible for Firefly Electronics to wait for the entire market to improve its own basic hardware facilities in this regard. Creating a channel for easy access to digital music has become an urgent issue for Firefly Electronics.
It is foreseeable that even if it is launched now, it will not take a few years. With the further popularization of personal computers and the Internet, mini music stores will gradually be phased out like public telephone booths, but as long as such a model comes from Firefly Electronics The digital music sales terminal can be popularized. There is no doubt that the Fireflyer player of Firefly Electronics will gain a market advantage that other digital music player manufacturers can hardly match.
However, if you want to promote this device, the biggest difficulty is music copyright.
After all, Firefly Electronics can indulge in private or even encourage users to 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 in the past two years, the scale of copyright, which can be sold by Yahoo digital music stores, has been expanding, but the world ’s five major Record Companys still have a pitiful license for the Yahoo digital music store. The content of the problem, this device wants to be promoted on a large scale, will undoubtedly be hindered.
In the office.
After listening to the engineers of Firefly Electronics, they explained in detail a series of music purchase processes such as user login, selection, payment, etc. The CEO of Universal Records, Doug Morrison, first said: "There is another very important issue, I just It looks like you made the purchase through the Yahoo electronic account, but what if you are a passerby user without a Yahoo electronic account? "
"Mr. Morrison, we also have a solution in this regard," said the engineer of Firefly Electronics: "You see, there is also a point card purchase option. In our plan, a large part of this equipment It will be placed in downtown areas such as supermarkets and subway stations. Users only need to purchase point cards at nearby stores, and can purchase music through the temporary account password given on the point cards. The basic principle is the same as that of prepaid calling cards. "
Doug Morrison nodded and looked at the Edgar · Bronfman beside him, although he did not show any special expression on the surface, in fact, Doug Morrison was already surprised. To no avail.
The promotion speed of Fireflyer player has already caught the traditional portable music player manufacturers and several major Record Company by surprise. Doug Morrison keenly foresees that once the digital music sales terminal in front of him is widely popularized, It will definitely completely overturn the existing pattern of the entire recording industry.
On the other hand, with the two major platform tools of Fireflyer player and digital music store, the influence of Firefly Electronics on the entire record industry will also be unlimited.
At this time, the first thought in Doug Morrison's mind is that Universal Records must reach an absolutely close and in-depth cooperation relationship with Firefly Electronics in order to gain a more favorable position in the upcoming new industrial structure. Or, resolutely boycott Firefly Electronics' plan and make every effort to maintain the original order of the record industry.
Moreover, from the perspective of an excellent professional Manager, Doug Morrison actually prefers the former.
With the rise of the Internet industry, the entire record industry was impacted by Internet pirated music last year, resulting in a decline in overall performance. It has been doomed that the industry will undergo earth-shaking changes. At this time, sticking to the rules will only let yourself fall into The Abyss.
Although from the media to Record Company, there is no lack of criticism that the Fireflyer player promotes piracy. But Doug Morrison knew that the impact of the popularity of the Fireflyer player on piracy was far from what the media generally described.
The impact on the record industry is ultimately due to the rise of the Internet industry. Most pirated users are currently more inclined to download free music resources from music websites and then copy them to CD discs for playback using traditional music players. According to statistics, in 1998, only North America local, the sales of blank CDs exceeded 130 million, which is more than five times the sales of Fireflyer players.
Compared to an average of 20USD genuine albums, the cost of blank CDs is even less than 1USD. Moreover, there is no channel to contain piracy in this regard. At this time, the Fireflyer player, widely criticized by the industry as an accomplice to pirated music, is precisely a platform that can turn Internet digital music from pirated to formal channels.
It's just that although there is a series of calculations in mind, Doug Morrison can't make this decision alone. Everything still needs to look at the ideas of Edgar · Bronfman, Boss.
Beside Doug Morrison, Edgar · Bronfman did not raise any doubts, so he thought about it for a moment and asked directly the opposite Eric: "Eric, Firefly Electronics intends to put many such machines into the market. Go? "
When Doug Morrison heard Edgar · Bronfman, he immediately had an urge to cover his forehead.
What kind of problem is this? How many machines does Firefly have to put in, is it temporarily related to Universal? We should be more concerned about how Firefly Electronics intends to cooperate with Universal records!
Eric was very patient and replied with a smile: "The first batch of 10,000 units, we will first focus on Europe for installation testing. If the results are good, the scale of the launch will expand rapidly."
Although I did n’t think I should ask this question, I heard Eric Williams ’s answer.
10,000.
This number is definitely not much, or even too little.
It is just an international metropolis like United Kingdom London with a population of 6-7 million. If you want to complete coverage, 500 machines may not be enough.
Moreover, in the view of Doug Morrison, 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, second- and third-tier cities also have sufficient digital music player consumption capabilities, but they do not necessarily have sufficient hardware and software facilities to obtain online music resources. There are still thousands of cities throughout Europe and large and small, which also excludes the lower-level towns. Thousands of cities, 10,000 machines, each city may not be able to be divided into ten, there may not be as many bank teller machines in these cities.
Of course, these are not issues that Universal records should consider, at least not for the time being.
Seeing that Edgar · Bronfman still needs to talk, worrying that he will ask any irrelevant questions, and even makes his family passive, hesitating, Doug Morrison is still rushing to say: "Eric, we all know You show everyone the intentions of this machine, so let ’s talk about your thoughts? "
Eric nodded, gestured towards the nearby sofa, took the two of them to sit on the sofa, and ordered the secretary to serve coffee before saying: "Ed, Doug, we all know that the current situation in the recording industry It's different from the past. It's like the Hollywood was in the era when it encountered TV Station and video recorders. At that time, the entire industry was like a big enemy, trying to prevent TV Station and video recorders from infringing on the interests of the Hollywood film industry. Time, in the end, when Hollywood found that it was absolutely impossible to organize each other, it was forced to choose cooperation. But in the end, it turned out that TV Station and video recorder not only did not harm the interests of Hollywood, but instead allowed Hollywood Film Studio to obtain additional income channels. The situation encountered by the record industry is exactly the same as that of Hollywood, but it is even more severe because the popularity of the Internet is much faster than that of TVs and VCRs in that year. Moreover, the cost of digital pirated music is much lower than that of movies, often just one person. One server is enough to cause hundreds of thousands of pirated music to spread on the Internet. Therefore, you do n’t have much time to hesitate. Once you miss the opportunity to establish a formal digital music sales platform, which leads people to become more accustomed to free music on the Internet, the record industry will come to an end. "
During the corners of his eyes, Doug Morrison interrupted: "Eric, you are alarmist."
"Is it alarmist, look at the sales decline of the record industry last year, just knows," Eric shrugged and said: "So, I mean, we should reach cooperation as soon as possible to formalize the Internet digital music industry. Only in this way can the entire recording industry be saved before the entire recording industry 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 Records puts its music resources into the Yahoo music store, and the share of the two parties is Three or seven points, of course, you are 70%. In addition, if you insist, Universal records and Firefly Records can be used as a window period of three months, the new release of the record, the physical record monopoly for three months, and then complete release Digital record, after three months, single split sales. "
"Eric, if you only have these conditions," Edgar · Bronfman continued: "I don't think we need to talk anymore."
"Actually, today I will just give you two introductions to the mini music store that Firefly Electronics has just developed," Eric laughed. "The specific cooperation plan and whether there are other requirements for Universal records can be discussed. Of course, our physical music store plan will not be delayed. Firefly Electronics plans to officially announce this plan at the time of the release of the Fireflyer three-generation player in April. At the same time, if we can achieve it Intention to cooperate, then I believe this will benefit both of us. "