Los Angeles, Firefly Studios. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In one of the borough's offices, Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Seagram Group, and Doug Morrison, CEO of Universal Music, are sitting around a bank teller machine-like machine with Eric, listening to an engineer from Firefly Electronics explain what it does.

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

This machine is also an unexpected surprise brought to him by the Firefly Electronics team when Eric attended the annual meeting of Firefly Electronics a few days ago.

Because Eric only approved the research and development plan of the digital music sales terminal submitted by Firefly Electronics in the second half of last year, it has only been less than a year now. Moreover, since Eric hadn't heard of the emergence of a digital music sales device similar to a vending machine in the original plane, he didn't particularly care about this plan.

But a few days ago, when I saw the prototype of Firefly Electronics, Eric was really amazed.

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

At the same time, Firefly Electronics's research results on the market prospect of the 'Mini Music Store' also made Eric pay more attention to this machine.

In the past, MP3 players should be popular around 2005, Apple opened up 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 Internet penetration in Western society was enough to support users to download digital music from MP3 players through their personal computers.

But at present, the number of Internet users in the world is less than 200 million, most of which are concentrated in North America, which has a total population of only about 300 million, and 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 supporting the rapid growth of the market capacity of digital music players.

In fact, this is also true.

Last year, the second generation of Fireflyer players was launched in both North America and Europe, and although at first, the number of Fireflyer player shipments in European countries was comparable to that in North America, in the next few months, due to the limitations of personal computers and Internet penetration, the shipment of Fireflyer players in Europe slowed down significantly. In 1998, of the 19.7 million units shipped of the second generation of Fireflyer, only 7.7 million units were shipped in Europe, which has twice the population of North America, and the other 12 million units were still absorbed by North America.

One of the most important reasons for this is that a large number of European consumers do not have a convenient way to copy or download music from Fireflyer players, so they are greatly discouraged from buying digital music players.

Although stimulated by the new wave of science and technology in North America, countries around the world are sparing no effort to invest in their own information industry, but Firefly Electronics obviously cannot wait for the entire market to improve the basic hardware facilities in this area, therefore, the initiative to create convenient channels for users to obtain digital music has become an urgent problem to be solved by 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, the mini music store will be gradually eliminated like a public telephone booth, but as long as such a digital music sales terminal from Firefly Electronics can be popularized, there is no doubt that Fireflyer Electronics' Fireflyer player will gain a market advantage that is absolutely difficult for other digital music player manufacturers to achieve.

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

Firefly Electronics can privately allow users to hack 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.

As a result, this digital music kiosk can only sell genuine digital music content through the Yahoo Music Store.

Although the number of digital music content owned by the Yahoo Digital Music Store has continued to increase in the past two years, the world's five major record companies still have very little content licensing for the Yahoo Digital Music Store.

Inside the office.

After listening to the engineer of Firefly Electronics explain in detail a series of music purchase processes such as user login, selection, and payment, Doug Morrison, CEO of Universal Music, first said to the engineer: "There is another very important question, I just saw that you made a payment 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 solution in place for this," the Firefly Electronics engineer said, turning the monitor to the digital store's homepage, pointing to an electronic button, "You see, there's also a point card purchase option." In our plan, a large part of this device will be installed in supermarkets, subway stations and other downtown areas, users only need to buy a point card at a nearby store, through the temporary account password given on the point card, to make music purchases. The basic principle is the same as that of a prepaid calling card. ”

Doug Morrison nodded, and glanced at Edgar Bronfman beside him without a trace, although he did not show any special expression on the surface, but in fact, Doug Morrison was already surprised in his heart.

The speed of the promotion of the Fireflyer player has already caught traditional portable music player manufacturers and several major record companies off guard, and Doug Morrison has a keen hunch that once this digital music sales terminal is widely popularized, it will definitely completely disrupt the existing pattern of the entire record industry.

On the other hand, with the two major platform tools of Fireflyer player and mini music store, the influence of Firefly Electronics on the entire record industry will also expand without limit.

At this time, Doug Morrison's first thought was that Universal Music would either form an absolutely close and in-depth partnership with Firefly Electronics in order to gain a more favorable position in the upcoming new industry landscape. Or, resolutely resist the plan of Firefly Electronics, and do everything possible to maintain the original order of the record industry.

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

With the rise of the Internet industry, the overall performance of the record industry was affected by the impact of Internet pirated music last year, which has already destined the industry to undergo earth-shaking changes. At this time, sticking to the rules will only make you fall into a more passive situation.

Although there is no shortage of voices from the media to record labels, there is no shortage of voices criticizing the Fireflyer player for fueling piracy. But in fact, many people know that the popularity of the Fireflyer player has not yet reached the level of bad influence on the distribution of pirated music.

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

Most pirate users currently prefer to download free music resources from music websites, and then copy them to CDs and play them on traditional music players. According to statistics, in 1998, the sales of blank CDs in North America alone exceeded 130 million copies, which is equivalent to more than five times the sales of Fireflyer players.

Compared to the average $20 for a genuine record, a blank CD costs less than $1.

Moreover, there is absolutely no way to curb piracy in this area. At this time, the Fireflyer player, which has been widely criticized by the industry as an accomplice to pirated music, is precisely a platform that can transfer Internet digital music from piracy to formal channels.

It's just that, although he has a series of calculations in his heart, it is impossible for Doug Morrison to make this decision alone, everything depends on the will of Edgar Bronfman, the boss.

Next to Doug Morrison, Edgar Bronfman didn't raise any doubts, pretended to think about it for a while, and asked Eric directly on the other side: "Eric, how many of these machines does Firefly Electronics plan to put on the market?"

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

What kind of problem is this, how many machines will Firefly Electronics put into place, and does it have anything to do with Universal for the time being? We should be more concerned about how Firefly Electronics intends to cooperate with Universal Records!

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 first." If the results are good, the scale of the campaign will be scaled up quickly. ”

Although he felt that he should not ask this question, after hearing Eric Williams' answer, Doug Morrison began to think quickly in his heart.

10,000 units.

This number is definitely not 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 the coverage, five hundred machines may not be enough.

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

Because first-tier cities tend to have a high level of PC and Internet penetration, residents in second- and third-tier cities are also potential consumers of digital music players, but they do not necessarily have the hardware and software facilities to access digital music resources. Across Europe, there are still thousands of cities, large and small, and this excludes the lower towns. Thousands of cities, 10,000 machines, each city may not be able to get 10, may not be as many as these cities bank ATMs.

Of course, these aren't the things Universal Music should be thinking about, at least not for the time being.

Seeing that Edgar Bronfman was still talking, worried that he would ask some irrelevant questions, and even make his own family passive, he hesitated, but Doug Morrison still hurriedly spoke: "Eric, we all know your intention to show everyone 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, and instructed the secretary to serve coffee before saying, "Ed, Doug, we all know that the current situation in the record industry is different from what it used to be. It's like back in the days when Hollywood was confronted with television and video cameras. At that time, the whole of Hollywood was like a great enemy, trying every possible way to prevent TV stations and VCRs from infringing on the interests of the Hollywood film industry, and the two sides were at a stalemate for a long time, and finally, when Hollywood found that it was absolutely impossible to stop each other, it was forced to choose cooperation. But in the end, it turned out that instead of harming Hollywood, TV stations and VCRs gave Hollywood studios a lucrative additional revenue stream. Today, the record industry is in the same situation as Hollywood back then, but even more severe. Because the popularity of personal computers and the Internet is far faster than that of televisions and video recorders in those days, and the cost and convenience of digital pirated music are much lower than that of movies, often just one person and one server is enough to cause hundreds of pirated music to be spread on the Internet. So, you don't have much time to hesitate, and if you miss the opportunity to set up a formal digital music sales platform that leads people to become more accustomed to free music on the Internet, 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. ”

"Isn't it alarmist, just look at the extent of the sales decline in the record industry last year," Eric shrugged, "So, I mean, we should reach a partnership as soon as possible to formalize the channels of digital music on the Internet." Only in this way can the entire industry be saved before the record industry collapses. ”

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

"Of course," Eric nodded, "Actually, the current sales model of the Yahoo Music Store is the cooperation plan I want to give." Universal Music puts its music assets into the Yahoo Music Store, and the two sides have a split of 37 points, of course, you are 70%. In addition, regarding the release of records, the Yahoo Music Store also has a complete set of plans, which you must have already known, with a three-month window period, new releases, physical records exclusive for three months, three months after the release of full digital records, and three months later, singles split sales. However, I would recommend that Universal adopt a sales model of physical and digital record releases, and most of Firefly Records' artists have embraced this distribution plan, and their income has increased a lot instead of this. ”

"Eric, if that's all you offer," Edgar Bronfman shook his head, "I don't think there's any need for us to talk about it. ”

"Actually, I'm just going to introduce you two to the mini music store that Firefly Electronics has just developed," Eric laughed, "We can talk about the specific cooperation plan, and if Universal Music has any other requirements." Of course, our plans for a physical music store won't be delayed. Firefly Electronics plans to release the third-generation Fireflyer player in April, and will announce the plan at the same time and move forward with implementation as soon as possible. So, if we can reach a cooperation before then, I believe it will be of great benefit to both Universal and Firefly Electronics. ”