Li Mu attaches great importance to matters related to co-branded headphones, so Muye Technology contacted two German companies, Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic, on the same day, vaguely revealing that Makino Technology intends to customize more than one million pairs of headphones from their companies. Regarding the intention of high-end headphones, the two companies responded to Makino Technology in the shortest possible time, showing their admiration for Makino Technology, a great Internet company, and their expectations for cooperation with Makino Technology.
Therefore, Fang Xudong temporarily transferred four targeted R&D personnel from the hardware laboratory, and together with Makino Technology's business team, prepared to leave for Germany.
Before the team set off, Li Mu held a small meeting with them. On the one hand, he wished them a smooth journey and a successful completion of the task. On the other hand, he also reiterated the core goal of this customized headset plan to everyone.
Customizing co-branded headphones is the first time this has happened among various music-based electronic products in the world.
Li Mu hopes to enhance the sound quality of Mango-ME2 and its cost-effectiveness in the eyes of consumers through co-branding with major headphone manufacturers. In addition, through co-branding with major headphone manufacturers to produce high-quality customized headphones, Mango-ME2 can also compete with Mango-ME2. The core difference with competing products is that since customized headphones are not sold separately, if consumers are interested in this unique headset, the only channel is to buy a Mango-ME2, or purchase it from a Mango-ME2 user. Buy inside.
However, Li Mu is not planning to equip all Mango-ME2s with such customized headphones. He plans to divide each model of Mango-ME2 into two versions, one is the regular version, the other is the deluxe version, and the regular version. Paired with Mango-ME's original ordinary headphones, while the deluxe version will be paired with future co-branded customized headphones.
The reason for the distinction is mainly because the increase in cost indicates that the terminal selling price will also increase. In many developing countries and regions, including China, consumers generally have insufficient purchasing power, so they have added Mango-ME2, a customized headset. It may add a lot of burden to ordinary consumers, so we need to give them a cheaper option.
At present, domestic music lovers rarely buy high-end players and headphones. For most consumers who use MP3 to listen to music, most of them are using earbuds priced below 50 yuan, and more of them use The price of headphones does not exceed 20 yuan. Similarly, the sales volume of the expensive iPod in China is very average. Most consumers who like music are not even willing to spend hundreds of yuan to buy an MP3, which often costs thousands or even thousands of yuan. iPod is only the choice of a very small number of high-end players in mainland China.
But in Western developed countries, the sales of high-end players like iPod are still very amazing. The price of a few hundred dollars is not a big sum for music lovers in developed countries, and the iPod's simple design and huge storage Space, excellent sound quality and high-end style are extremely attractive to these consumers who can afford it.
However, even for the Apple iPod, its hardware cost is mainly concentrated on the body itself, and the quality of the accompanying headphones is relatively average, and the sound quality is not outstanding. At best, it is the level of headphones that cost 100 yuan a piece.
The main goal of Mango-ME2, which has added co-branded customized headphones, is to compete head-on with the iPod in its target market. By then, the co-branded customized headphones will become an important part of Mango-ME2's ability to crush the iPod in terms of sound quality, and Apple wants to Catching up requires a long window of time.
If Apple discovers that the Mango-ME2, which is a customized headset co-branded with a well-known manufacturer, is much ahead of the iPod in terms of sound quality, there are only two ways for Apple to respond, either to cut prices or to catch up. Li Mu is least afraid of price cuts. If Apple dares to If the price of the iPod drops to zero profit or even extremely low profit, then Apple will strangle its own money. Therefore, Apple's only truly effective response is to catch up.
However, it is not that easy to catch up in terms of hardware. Li Mu is sure that first of all, Apple does not have its own headphone production line. If it wants to upgrade its Apple headphones, what it can do is to entrust a company that makes headphones for them to carry out the production of Apple headphones. Upgrading is not something that can be completed in a few days. Even if it is launched in a hurry, it will probably take at least a few weeks.
Moreover, upgrading headphones means an increase in overall costs for Apple. If Apple passes on this additional cost to consumers, the price disadvantage of the iPod will increase. And if Apple carries this cost on its own Part of the cost will have a huge impact on its profit margins.
Again, at this stage, Li Mu can lose money in the player business, but at this stage, Apple can't. This is its Achilles' heel!
…
The small team set off for Germany, and Li Mu still had to make final preparations for the launch of YYtunes. The most important of these was to finally confirm the payment process and payment channels of YYtunes.
In countries and regions with strong overseas copyright protection, the popularity of paying for music is very high, but the traditional payment method is to purchase genuine physical albums, whether they are tapes, CDs, or MDs. Apple's itunes has just begun to try online this year Music payment is somewhat successful now, but after all, it has just started and is not yet mature, so YYtunes has a great chance of catching up.
Since Makino Technology is extremely well-known globally and has the largest number of users in the Internet field, YYtunes is very attractive to record companies. Therefore, Makino Technology is much more attractive to record companies than just starting an online music store. Apple, when Makino Technology contacted these record companies, hoping to obtain their authorization to sell online music and share profits with them, almost no record company refused to cooperate. Compared with Apple, some record companies are still It is in the hesitant and wait-and-see stage, so before YYtunes is launched, its copyright library has already surpassed that of Apple, which has just started.
At present, YYtunes has obtained the copyright authorization from most record companies around the world and has fully digitized the music. At the same time, according to Li Mu's requirements, technicians have stored three different versions in YYtunes' own database. Each version is divided based on sound quality: standard, higher, and extremely high.
There are two ways to sell music on YYtunes: download purchase and monthly subscription purchase.
In YYtunes, downloads of singles and albums need to be purchased separately, while for online listening, you only need to pay a fixed monthly fee. For online listening, you do not need to pay for individual songs, you only need to pay monthly. For a certain amount of money, you can become a member of YYtunes and listen to any song in the music library online for free.
Like itunes, YYtunes also adopts a profit sharing ratio of 3:7 with record companies. For example, the download price of a song is US$0.99. For each song that is paid to download, the record company will take away US$0.69, and the record company will take away US$0.69. Most of the profits are given to the record companies, thereby bringing more digital copyright income to the record companies, thereby increasing the overall scale of the music industry.
The monthly account splitting uses the "number of playback splitting" logic designed by Li Mu. For example, the monthly subscription fee of YYtunes is US$9.9. In June this year, there were 10 million monthly subscription users, and a monthly subscription income of US$99 million was generated in June. According to 3: With a distribution ratio of 7, the total amount to be distributed to record companies is 69.3 million US dollars. In early July, the platform will calculate the number of monthly subscription plays in June. For example, the entire platform has 10 million monthly subscription users. In the past June, a total of one billion plays were generated, so the US$69.3 million allocated to the record company was divided by one billion times to calculate the revenue share that should be given to the record company for a single play.
Calculated based on this calculation, the monthly user's single play share is US$0.069. If a certain record company licenses a total of 20,000 songs, and these 20,000 songs are played a total of 2 million times in June, then the company will receive US$138,600 in June. If a popular singer’s single is played a total of 10 million times in June, then the share of the single in one month can reach US$690,000.
This set of settlement logic of "splitting the number of plays" has been recognized by all record companies. They were originally worried that the distribution of monthly income would be uneven and unfair, but based on this set of settlement logic, they no longer have to worry. .
Li Mu does all this not only to attack Apple, but also to support the development of the music industry. This stems from his absolute respect for creation and intellectual property rights.
In order to enhance the promotion of the music industry, Li Mu also specially opened the path for independent musicians to apply for entry in YYtunes. If an independent musician wants to sell his music through YYtunes, he can apply for a musician account in the background and upload his own After the music content is reviewed, his songs will be listed on YYtunes. Independent musicians can increase their income by selling music on YYtunes.
The life of most original singers is very difficult, not only in the mainland, but also all over the world. For an original singer without company packaging and financial support, if he wants to record an original song, he must first complete the songwriting and then write it himself Try to arrange music, or pay someone to arrange it. After the arrangement is completed, you also need to spend money to hire professional musicians to record accompaniments for yourself, such as guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and other instrumental music, harmony, and the musicians put together After all, they pay a sum of money to rent a recording studio, which records, post-processes, and then records it into a record. Many original singers lose their money after recording a song, let alone recording an entire album.
For such musicians, what they need most is a channel to monetize music. Otherwise, when their creations are not rewarded, it will be difficult for them to continue to stick to their own music path, and it is very likely that they will say goodbye to music. And the songs he could originally create will also be aborted. No one knows how much good music a guy who sits in front of a computer and writes code or washes dishes in a restaurant can bring to the masses if he embarks on the path of music. music.
However, for these people, traditional forms of music monetization are too difficult. They can only achieve it by signing with a record company. Now, they can realize rapid monetization through YYtunes, and YYtunes will be backed by YY’s strong traffic in the future. , will definitely be able to become an opportunity platform for original musicians to go from grassroots to becoming popular.
However, in the first phase of YYtunes launch, these charging methods will only be implemented in countries and regions with developed economies or that have passed copyright protection, which are mainly Western developed countries, as well as Japan and South Korea.
Therefore, the core payment channel currently used by YYtunes is PayPal, which is settled in US dollars, followed by the credit card electronic payment channels of VISA and Master-Card. Although Alipay has also been integrated into YYtunes, Li Mu estimates that Alipay will basically not have How many users use it? This is mainly because he knows in his heart that it is impossible to expect Chinese netizens to pay for online music at this stage.
In China, YYtunes was launched under the name "YY Music", and the first phase of its launch was completely free.
The reason why it is completely free is because Li Mu knows that if YY Music imposes charges in China, it will basically end in the same way: death, and death very quickly.
Domestic intellectual property protection is still far from the level of eliminating piracy, and even the crackdown on piracy is only scratching the itch. More importantly, domestic users currently have a deep-rooted concept that online music should be free, and there is no need to do so. Possessing chargeable soil.
Regarding this point, Li Mu himself is very helpless, but there is no effective way, so he can only make it free for users to accept free genuine music, and then promote paid music when the market and legal conditions allow it in the future.
In order to make record companies willing to provide free online listening and downloading to Chinese users in China, Li Mu specially added several advertising sections to YY Music. In the future, these advertisements will all be used to target medium and large enterprises with sufficient social credit. For paid advertising, all the advertising revenue will be used to subsidize record companies. At that time, a dual model of "splitting the number of plays and the number of downloads" will be adopted to fairly and equitably distribute advertising costs to major record companies.
Advertising revenue is naturally much less than paid revenue. These record companies also know that in this way, they will not actually get too much money. At least the revenue scale lacks imagination, but if you look at the problem from another dimension, everything suddenly becomes clear. .
After all, no record company in the world can earn digital copyright income in China, especially in mainland China. Music product income is also pitifully low due to the strong impact of piracy. Therefore, if they do not agree to Li Mu’s cooperation plan, their music They will still be listened to and downloaded on China's network, and no one will give them a dime. At least Li Mu will use all the advertising revenue to subsidize them. Who will have trouble with money
At this stage, Apple's iTunes only provides music payment services in the United States. They are currently in the stage of crossing the river by feeling for stones. According to the historical development trajectory, they will expand this business to the United Kingdom next year, and then gradually expand. to more countries. However, for Makino Technology, with the support of global products like YY and the completed global data processing center, YYtunes can be deployed in North America and Western Europe in the first phase of its launch. , Australia, Japan and South Korea simultaneously launched paid services. This speed is definitely a flash sale for Apple at this stage.
(End of chapter)