Reborn Millennial Gamer

Chapter 229 Pick the soft persimmon first
Back from the Microsoft headquarters, the Seattle hotel, it was getting late at night.

Negotiations with Ballmer and Bill Gates went quite smoothly. After all, the enemy's enemy is a friendly army, and people need people to give people.

Lu Fei got out of the car and went back to the bedroom, took a hot shower to wash away the tiredness of the day, then sat in front of the computer and opened iTunes.

The current version's interface isn't quite what it will be in the future, just a music player with smart playlists, the ability to burn MP3 music directly to CD by the way, and that's it.

The itunes mall has not yet been born. In comparison, it is not as logical as Spotify.

My mind was clear, and Spotify's future planning and product function design suddenly emerged, just like going through a game strategy before entering a level.

After thinking for a while, I got up and walked to the window, opened the curtains, and hung the moon in the night sky, not necessarily the ones in foreign countries are rounder than China.

At this moment, there was a sudden knock on the door.

"The door is open, come in."

Lu Fei put his hands in his pockets, turned his head, and saw Guo Xing walked in without even changing his clothes. The bright smile on his face undoubtedly brought good news——

"Mr. Lu, Bezos knew it was our product, so he tried it out and agreed to put it on the shelves. The preliminary intention has been negotiated."

While speaking, he took out an unpacked "The World Is Flat" from his briefcase. The four corners of the book were bumped and wrinkled, obviously it had been used for a long time.

"He wants you to sign it and bring it with you when you sign the contract."

"How about other online and offline progress?"

Lu Fei took the book and flipped through it casually. Every page was circled, and there was even a bookmark stuck on the cloud computing chapter.

"There are no difficulties online for the time being, but there are many problems offline. For example, to enter Wal-Mart, you must sell in the United States for one year and open a warehouse."

Guo Xing was entangled, "Other large supermarkets like Costco have not low barriers to entry."

Lu Fei put the book on the table, unscrewed the Parker pen, "Don't worry, take your time, it's only been two days."

"If you have Microsoft's endorsement, things will be much easier." Guo Xing said with great anticipation: "Mr. Lu, how are you talking with Microsoft?"

"Agreed." Lu Fei truthfully stated that Microsoft was even willing to invest in Spotify.

Guo Xing was overjoyed, "Really!?"

"Don't be too happy." Lu Fei revealed the prerequisites for persuading the record giant to authorize.

Guo Xing turned from joy to worry, and his eyebrows formed an upside-down character due to his frowning forehead.

Lu Fei patted him on the shoulder: "Things in the world don't always go as we wish. You want to do this, but you can't do it all at once. Sometimes the shortest shortcut is to take a long detour."

Guo Xing said inwardly: "Mr. Lu, those are the top 5 record companies."

"It's a matter of human effort! Isn't there still a Microsoft executive."

As soon as Lu Fei said it, the staff appointed by Microsoft appeared in front of the bedroom door, and it was Li Kaifu and Kurokawa Ochi who came.

I saw that Kurokawa Oike ignored the people present, his legs softened, his knees knelt down, his hands were put on the ground, and as he leaned forward, he slammed his forehead heavily on the ground:
"Lu, crooked core, crooked core, Sao Rui."

Yo, it's been less than a day, why are you so lazy.

The corner of Lu Fei's mouth raised imperceptibly, and he pretended to be confused and asked, "Hey, I saw this on TV, what's it called..."

Li Kaifu hastily explained: "Dogeza, Neon's highest standard of apology etiquette, Dachi begged for forgiveness for his rudeness to you in the morning."

"Since it's the most important apology etiquette for Nihong, you should speak Japanese, otherwise it won't taste like that."

Lu Fei looked down at Heikawa Ochi who was still kneeling on the ground. His butt was so high that it was higher than his head. He looked very much like "Song Jiang" played by Li Xuejian, and he couldn't help but kick him.

Guo Xing pursed his lips and almost laughed out loud.

Li Kaifu and others kept pulling their mouths upwards, wanting to laugh but trying their best to restrain themselves.

Murder, but also punish!

When Kurokawa Oike heard the translation, his face buried on the ground twisted, the corners of his eyes twitched wildly, he stood up again, and kowtowed heavily:
"Lu Feijun, red bean paste Smith Marseille!"

"Oh, it's just a little misunderstanding, why do you give such a big gift."

Lu Fei pretended to be reserved and helped him up, and he heard Li Kaifu say that from now on, their temporary team will cooperate and assist, regardless of whether the negotiation with the record company is successful or not, they will automatically disband at the end of the year.

Kurokawa Ochi respectfully said: "Lu, give the order."

"I want you to collect some recent information about the music industry, as well as record company financial reports and other materials."

Lu Fei specially emphasized: "The most important thing is to find out how far their cooperation with Apple has progressed. How many days will it take?"

Li Kaifu wondered: "This workload will take a lot of time."

"Within three days, there must be information, and it must be detailed and accurate."

Lu Fei made a firm decision without leaving room for negotiation.

…………

In the next three days, Lu Fei received a large number of emails in his mailbox one after another.

On Microsoft's side, he also entrusted MIH's Wang Dawei and New York Times' Friedman to help him collect dense information and intelligence.

In addition to Zhang Tianmei, Guo Xing dispatched another Wang Pu to speed up the translation of the manuscript.

Lu Fei nestled in the suite, with his arms crossed, and a white writing board in front of him.

In the column above, Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI, and BMG are written in order. The five major record giants occupy more than 5% of the music copyrights in the United States.

It seems that the wind and the rain are like wind and rain, but the piracy of the millennium has crushed the Chinese music scene, and the United States is not much better.

The spring breeze of pirated websites is reborn, one Napster has fallen, and there are tens of thousands of Napsters.

The five giants suffered serious losses, so the remaining four giants approached Sony, hoping that it would take the lead in formulating general standards for protecting digital music copyrights.

But Sony is like a Michelin-starred western chef, cutting fish, meat, and bread. The hardware knife is exquisite, but when it comes to the software that is like Chinese cuisine, it can't cut garlic, let alone tofu.

Maybe if Zhang Xiaoquan is used, the kitchen knife will break.

He picked up a red marker pen and drew horizontal lines, with five arrows pointing to the "apple" in another column.

Zhang Tianmei flipped through the manuscript and said, "Mr. Lu, these record giants visited Jobs, hoping to outsource the development of codecs for music copyrights to Apple."

"What happened, failed?"

Lu Fei raised his eyebrows, not matching the script of the previous life.

According to this script, Apple will at most earn a little software outsourcing fee and a little royalties, the record giants will be able to solve the piracy problem smoothly, the sales of online stores will surge, and Sony will continue to take the lead.

Zhang Tianmei hurriedly turned to the next page, "Sony withdrew from the cooperation plan and wanted to develop its own proprietary codec."

"quit?"

Lu Fei frowned, and immediately saw Sony's wolfish ambitions. He wanted to dominate the digital music era!

"Little neon dog can't change eating shit, always wants to stud."

Immediately, the arrow drawn from "Sony" was erased and rewritten as "do it alone", let alone Apple, even with the logic of Microsoft's backing, there are many difficulties.

Among the remaining targets, Universal is the strongest, but it flirts with Apple, and writes [Strive for] after it.

Turn your attention to the other three, and think about the first main attack point, just like facing a bunch of legions in a battle, knock on the weakest and most critical one first, and drop the first domino bone, and it will chain React, the following dominoes will fall one after another.

America's digital music standards, set by me!

He thought for a moment, "Contact Li Kaifu and ask him to make an appointment with the president of Warner Music for me."

"Okay, Mr. Lu!"

Zhang Tianmei hesitated for half a minute, wondering in her heart, shouldn't the easy ones be followed by the difficult ones, should they win the easiest EMI and BMG first?
Lu Fei stroked his chin and looked through Warner's artist list.

………………

California, Office of the President of Warner Music Group.

Roger Eames was physically and mentally exhausted, pirated websites and software made him dizzy, the company's traditional channel profits plummeted, and the financial situation went from bad to worse, his position was also unstable and precarious.

"Boss, the music download site is complete."

The secretary knocked on the door and entered, briskly, with exciting news.

"Real!"

Roger Emmes was immediately refreshed, and couldn't wait to use Warner's self-developed music download service. The operation was as fierce as a tiger, and the smile on his face froze instantly after the MP3 file was downloaded.

I can't find this song on the desktop, and there is no such song in the folder, and even searching on the computer, I can't find the existence of this song.

"fuxk!"

He turned from joy to anger, and slammed the table down. With a bang, the secretary who was frightened to announce the good news fell silent and cursed wildly.

"Let them do it again, if they can't do it, it will be included in the next round of layoffs!"

"Boss, professional things should be done by professional people, we are good at music..."

The secretary shrank her head, feeling bitter.

Except for Sony, the programmers of the music companies are all frankly a bunch of second-rate scum, and the software they make is not bad enough to be a ghost.

"Are you teaching me what to do?"

Roger Eames glared angrily, and asked the secretary to urge the R&D department to rectify within a time limit. Then, as if his soul had been drained, he collapsed on the chair and looked at the ceiling.

Eyelids fight slightly and close unconsciously.

"On January 2000, 1, America Online officially announced that it would merge Time Warner, the world's largest media company, at a sky-high price of $10 billion. The two companies successfully completed the merger and became a super media integrating Internet services, publishing, news and entertainment Aircraft carrier, surpassing Disney in one fell swoop..."

In his sleep, he couldn't help but look back at Time Warner's peak moments before the dot-com bubble, with a proud smile on his face.

After a while, dark clouds gathered.

As the dream turned into a storm, Time Warner, the super aircraft carrier, suffered a huge loss of more than 500 billion U.S. dollars, the stock price plummeted, the fake account scandal was made public, and the layoffs caused a huge earthquake...

Roger Eames' expression became more and more ferocious and distorted. He dreamed that the aircraft carrier sank, and he fell into the sea and drowned. He woke up immediately:
"what!"

"Boss?"

The secretary walked in immediately upon hearing the wind, "Are you ok?"

"I am fine."

Roger Eames took a sip of water and pulled his tie a few times.

The secretary looked suspiciously, and reported: "The vice president of Microsoft called just now and invited you to meet someone, saying that he can solve our current predicament."

"Microsoft?"

Roger Eames was shocked, "Who?"

"Lu, Huaxia Lu, is the author of "The World Is Flat." The secretary shook his head.

"It's him!"

Roger Eames glanced sideways. There was an unopened copy of "The World Is Flat" on the bookshelf, and he couldn't help being curious.

"Boss, how should I reply?" the secretary asked.

"When and where?"

"In just a few days, Lu is going to the headquarters to take pictures. He is the cover character of the first issue of the Asian edition of "Time" next year!"

　Thank you for the 100 starting coins of ds playing mud.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)