After discussing the naming of mp3 players, Bill Olsen continued: "The next one is the Yahoo Music Store, or Yahoo Music Box. We have obtained online sales licenses for about 200,000 songs, but the cooperation negotiations with the five world-class record companies with the richest music copyright resources have not made much progress. Therefore, irelyer's main music source should be D discs. Thanks to the promotion of mp3 audio format, more than 50% of D discs currently use mp3 format. Even in non-mp3 formats, we can convert it into mp3 audio through transcoding."

The original contract between Yahoo and Microsoft will expire in two years. Although Microsoft has begun to frequently suffer from antitrust investigations in recent years, it can be foreseen that after the contract expires in July 1999, once Microsoft abandons the original 30% equity acquisition plan, it will inevitably lead to Yahoo browser losing its default browser status on the indos platform. Eric's initial suggestion was to develop a Yahoo music store website, but in order to avoid the future exclusion of Yahoo browser by Microsoft, Yahoo has been promoting the separate software of various online products in recent years to reduce its dependence on Yahoo browser.

This time, Yahoo and Firefly Electronics teamed to improve Eric's original rough ideas in detail and developed a separate Yahoo Music Box software as a sales platform for online music stores. At the same time, Yahoo Music Box can also more conveniently develop special software modules to identify pirated D discs in a targeted manner to prevent them from being used for audio copying. To be honest, because of the living environment in previous lives, Eric had never considered this at first. He was also glad that Yahoo and Firefly Electronics' team thought of this. Otherwise, when irelyer is released, Firefly Electronics will definitely face lawsuits and bombardment from major record companies.

Before the projector, Bill Olson said this and looked at Eric again, saying: "Eric, although Yahoo is trying to concentrate a large amount of music resources on its own online store to activate more paid users on the Yahoo platform. But I think this is not a good deal. Just like Sony, although they have alkman, they still don't expect all record companies to hand over copyright to them to make music tapes. This is simply impossible. In my opinion, irelyer has the potential to replace the alkman walkman. If we can be more open and authorize each record company to operate its own online music store separately, irelyer's influence will expand rapidly. Alkman's current annual sales are 15 million pieces. If irelyer can also reach this level, at a price of $299, our annual sales will reach $4.5 billion."

Eric said: "But Bill, irelyer, now has no such influence. It can prompt major record companies to set up special music stores for it. If we insist, the record companies will definitely open their mouths. On the other hand, if irelyer has enough influence in the future, we will not need to compromise with record companies anymore. They will only take the initiative to seek cooperation."

"But there should always be a suitable time, Eric," said Bill Olsen. "Although we installed a piracy identification module on the Yahoo Music Box, we cannot stop all piracy in the end, and the risk of litigation still exists. If we can completely cut off the channel for copying the D disc and achieve complete digitalization, we can avoid this situation as much as possible."

Eric actually knew Bill Olsen’s thoughts. He hoped that Yahoo Music Box could be stripped from Yahoo and operated by Firefly Electronics alone, but Eric refused. Since Firefly Electronics could not occupy this platform, for the interests of Firefly Electronics itself, Bill Olsen hoped that the music sales platform would be more open.

Spreading his hands, Eric smiled and said, "Bill, we all know that it is still impossible to stop piracy issues by fully realizing digital sales. However, since Sony's videotape lawsuit won the lawsuit, the copyright holder can no longer prevent the technological advancement through litigation. Moreover, all audio and video playback platforms such as alkman, video recorder, D player, MD Walkman and DVD player cannot completely eliminate piracy issues. Therefore, we only need to do what we can and do not worry about too many problems in this regard."

Bill Olson knew from Eric's smile that he had seen through his thoughts and was not embarrassed. He bypassed this topic and continued to discuss irelyer's component procurement system construction, sales network construction and product marketing issues.

Eric has invested about $60 million in the research and development of mp3 players and e-book readers in the past two years, including the cost of entrusting Seagate to develop micro hard drives and the cost of acquiring the ii patent rights. There are not much research and development in mp3 players. After all, Firefly Electronics has only more than 190 R&D teams in charge of the two products. Although the annual salary of Silicon Valley engineers is generally high, their salary expenses in the past two years are only 30 million.

However, Bill Olson's budget plan for irelyer from component procurement to product marketing reached 200 million US dollars, giving Eric the feeling that it was like spending $60 million to make a movie, but it took $200 million to promote and release costs.

Of course, the prospect of irelyer is certainly worth the budget, as Bill Olson mentioned at the conference that if irelyer can replace alkman, it will bring billions of dollars in revenue to Firefly Electronics every year, and, better than everyone else, irelyer, does have the potential to replace alkman and all other portable music players at present.

The meeting was held until four o'clock in the afternoon, and the detailed release and promotion plan of irelyer was determined. Eric and Chris visited the company's R&D department with two heads of Firefly Electronics.

At six o'clock, everyone had dinner together, and Eric flew back to Los Angeles while the night was dark. Chris would continue to stay and dominate the integration of Firefly Electronics and British Arm chip companies. The relevant plan was determined yesterday through a conference call with the arm management. Before that, Firefly Electronics had already taken out samples of the e-book reader, but because the current production cost of this machine is close to US$400, if sufficient profit is to be ensured, the sales price should be set at least US$700, which is a price that ordinary consumers are difficult to accept. After everyone's discussion, Eric decided to give up this product temporarily, and instead use the accumulated technology to develop more functional tablet pads with the cooperation of Firefly Electronics, Arm and Yahoo. This is also the second stage of Eric's plan, and plans to launch mature products around 2000. At that time, with the further development of the electronics industry, the manufacturing cost of the pad will definitely drop to a more reasonable price.

The Gulfstream business plane landed at Santa Monica Airport in the hazy night. Eric just got off the plane and received a call from Michael Eisner himself asking him if he had time to have a meal together in the evening.

Of course Eric knows Michael Eisner's purpose, and the digital field stops foreign cooperation. For a long time in the future, Warner, Paramount, Universal and Sony will find it difficult to produce excellent G special effects movies. In the past few days, almost all senior executives of several major film companies have called in person to test whether Erik has the possibility of canceling this decision. Michael Eisner's phone call is still relatively backward.

Considering that there were no reservations tonight, Eric agreed to get off and took a bus to the Morton Restaurant in Beverly Hills, a well-known restaurant that Hollywood filmmakers often roamed.

When we arrived at the restaurant, it was almost nine o'clock. Under the guidance of the waiter, Eric quickly found the location of Michael Eisner.

Michael Eisner, who was sitting at the dining table reading a newspaper, saw Erik coming over and stood up. The two shook hands and said hello. Erik couldn't help but tease: "I didn't expect you would choose this restaurant."

This sentence is not aimless, but a past event that most people in Hollywood know.

In the mid-1980s, Michael Eisner, who was still president of Paramount, was planning to switch jobs to Disney as CEO because of his strong relationship with Martin Davis, the parent company chairman. When he agreed with several Disney parties and resigned from Paramount, the Disney board of directors had a dispute over the decision to appoint Michael Eisner, which also led to Michael Eisner's sudden unemployment. Immediately,

Michael Eisner, who had just left the Hollywood Center for Power, immediately encountered the dilemma of leaving and tea. One night, he planned to have dinner with his friend Michael Orwitz and called to set a seat at Morton Restaurant. He had never been rejected before, but was suddenly told that the customer was full. Michael Orwitz, who was present, called again and easily set a seat. This kind of thing was simply a humiliation for a Hollywood tycoon.

Michael Eisner heard Eric's teasing, but his expression was very plain and said lightly: "Always remind yourself often."

"Ha," Eric smiled, and the two sat down. Although they had already had dinner in San Francisco, Eric ordered a meal.

When the waiter left, Michael Eisner took the initiative to speak: "Eric, I heard you have been to San Francisco these two days?"

"Well, a company that has become a company over there has been a small thing and will be on sale soon. I'll go over and take a look."

Michael Eisner smiled and said, "Things that you value are definitely not as simple as small things, right?"

Eric suddenly realized something, but his expression did not change. Instead, he explained in detail: "It is a brand new portable music player. Unfortunately, the sample is in my luggage, otherwise I could give you one, which is quite interesting little thing."

Since Michael Eisner already knew about this, he no longer concealed it. Eric even speculated that Michael Eisner probably already knew about Yahoo and Universal Records' online music sales.

It is obvious that Michael Eisner wants to use Universal Records' copyright as a bargaining chip in exchange for some tangible benefits, such as continuing technical support for Universal Pictures in the digital field.

However, Michael Eisner obviously made a mistake in his plan.

"Actually, I had dinner with Doug Morris of Universal Records at noon today, and happened to hear about this," Michael Eisner said without going around the corner. "I also heard that Yahoo and Universal Records' cooperation negotiations seemed to be in a stalemate."

"This is inevitable," Eric said. "Big companies always have the arrogance of big companies. They often cannot see the situation clearly. When they have the initiative, they hold their own identities and are not enterprising. When they lose the initiative one day, they will regard themselves as victims."

In the original time and space, several major record companies originally had advantages that far exceeded Apple to deploy mp3 players, but either in order to maintain their market position as the old portable player that is about to be eliminated, or in the group's management system is rigid and slow to respond. In short, in mp3 players, which is a low-threshold electronic product, although many record companies have tried it, they all ended in failure. In the end, Apple occupied more than 70% of the music player market. In the end, they had to surrender the rules of Apple's online music sales platform and were led by others. From time to time, they complained about Apple's players like complaining about their condones and infringe on their rights and interests. Don't you know that even without Apple, in the Internet era, due to the significant reduction in the cost of pirated music, the record industry could not maintain its former glory.

Of course, Michael Eisner couldn't see the future scene. Although he felt that Eric's words were a bit puzzled, he did not refute them.

After chatting casually, the dinner was brought up quickly. Michael Eisner took a sip of wine, put down his goblet, and continued: "Eric, I think you must have guessed what I think. That's right, I can help convince Mr. Bronfman to support the cooperation between Yahoo and Universal Records, but in exchange, I hope that the digital field will continue to open up its cooperation with Universal Pictures. What do you think?"

Eric shook his head and said, "Sorry, Michael, I can't agree to your conditions."
Chapter completed!