Reborn 2005: The Internet Myth

The online music business can definitely bring a lot of revenue to WeChat. Just look at Apple's iTunes.

iPod plus iTunes have contributed a lot of cash income to Apple.

In 2006, the world's four major record companies, Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI, had an almost complete monopoly on 99% of music copyrights. Only in the 2010s did some independent labels begin to appear.

In the West, copyright is a big issue.

As early as 2000, the popular music sharing software Napster was punished until it went bankrupt because it could not prevent piracy.

So if you want to provide online music services, you must pay royalties to the four major records.

At the same time, we have to prevent the music from being spread wantonly, which may lead to being sued by the Big Four and leading to bankruptcy.

It can be said that the four major record labels have taken great pains to prevent piracy and sell more records.

A rogue software was also developed to prevent CDs from being copied and installed on the computer, which made users feel sick.

Apple's approach is very smart because it has developed its own unique audio format AIFF, which can only be played on Apple iPod and iTunes.

Even if the music files are distributed, other players cannot be used and can only be played through the iPod. Anyway, the meat is rotten in the own pot.

However, iTunes can only be regarded as a music downloading software, and although the AIFF format has good sound quality, it is relatively large in size. A song can easily be dozens of MB, so it is definitely not feasible for online listening.

As for the lossless music formats such as APE, FLAC, WAV and other formats that will be more popular in the future, they already have codecs and cannot be used.

MP3 is a piece of shit. If you use it, the defendant will be left completely bruised.

In the future, in order to prevent piracy, domestic music manufacturers such as Goosechangzhuchang will develop a lot of encrypted audio formats such as ncm, qmc, mgg,

By cracking the hands of the masters pursuing freedom.

Although the A2V format that Wang Zheng removed from the format factory previously supports video, the sound of the video is plugged in and is still in MP3 format.

Because A2V itself is an image format, it does not support sound processing.

Therefore, a music format similar to the A2V image format with a large compression ratio and low sound distortion is imminent.

There are only a few mainstream music formats in the future. In terms of lossy formats, the low-level format is MP3, the high-level format is AAC, and the lossless formats are APE and FLAC. It’s hard to say which one is more advanced. It mainly depends on the parameters.

After all, music quality is mainly limited by the two basic parameters of sampling frequency and bit rate. The better the sound quality, the higher these two values ​​will definitely be.

Of course, it cannot be too high. Although computers have no limits, human ears have limits after all. The range from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz is basically the limit, so the sampling frequency above 20,000 Hz and below 20 Hz

It's a waste of disk space and can't be heard.

If WeChat wants to provide a music service, it would not be a big problem to imitate Apple and write its own encryption format, but it would not solve the actual problems - bandwidth/storage consumption and how to ensure the quality of music.

For example, the ones you can listen to for free are at 64/128 bit rate. If it is any lower, it will be considered a Hu Nongren, and you will not be able to listen to it.

Then at least 256 bitrate can meet the charging standard, and a higher bitrate of 512 can be sold for money. If you want to sell it at a high price, why don't you use 1024 bitrate?

Making money is making money, you can't rely on monopoly and be unreasonable.

So a song has to be saved in so many different versions. There are at least millions of songs from the four major record companies...

Why did the Big Four later choose CDs to store music for sale? Because the bit rate of CDs is 1411, a music file is very large, some can reach 400 or 500 MB, so they had to choose CDs, which are cheap, high quality, and easy to carry.

products, and the CDs can also prevent piracy.

After the CD is converted to MP3 format, a song only costs 3 to 5 MB, while the original version is at least 3 to 5 MB. The difference in sound quality basically ends here.

So it is very important to bring a new format to audio.

But this time there is no need to use a USB flash drive. Wang Zheng has already prepared this music format, which is called MAQ format.

This format is used to replace MP3 and AAC in the future. It is also a lossy compression format. It supports up to 7.1 channels and supports a very high bit rate, from 8 to 1024kb/s. The sampling frequency has not changed, from 16 Hz to 2.2.

This range is 10,000 Hz.

After all, no matter how high or low it is, you really can't hear it.

The main advantage of this format is that the bit rate and channels can be actively adjusted through the decoder.

In other words, you only need to save an original version on the server, and you can control its playback effect through the function of the decoder.

Like the A2C image format, a 4K video can be controlled to display 4K or 2K through the decoder.

After all, the number of songs in the future is too huge. There are nearly 10 billion songs in the world. If they were all electronic, the amount of storage required would be terrifying.

With this format, WeChat Music can make money by selling subscription services and albums after it goes online.

You can also learn from Apple and make a player first, sell it cheaper, and make a lot of profits.

The copyright and patent process of the MAQ format has been gone through before. Now it can be used directly, and it can also increase some bargaining chips with the four major records.

After passing the MAQ codec to WeChat, Wang Zheng began to think about the future route of the streaming media business again.

Wang Zheng is not very worried about the oil pipeline model. It is still very early for this to be developed. Gu Ge spent more than one billion to acquire the oil pipeline a while ago, but it is not yet known whether it will be successful.

However, Meta will open the video upload function to all users sooner or later. It is hard to say whether there will be a YouTube channel or not.

He cares more about Microsoft and Apple.

Both of these companies have online streaming services, so this link is of course indispensable with their benchmark Ultron system.

Therefore, the final direction of WeChat videos must be TV series, variety shows and movies.

Of course, a TV box is also indispensable. After all, European and American users prefer the box model.

Apple has Apple TV, and although Microsoft's Xbox is a game console, it can be made into a TV box at any time to provide streaming media services.

The key is content.

It’s impossible for all content to be old, especially TV dramas. If you are following dramas, why don’t you rush to watch new plots?

There are also variety shows, which have a wider audience, and the possibility of simultaneous broadcast on TV networks and the Internet is almost zero.

But if you wait until the release is over before including it in the WeChat video, the day lily will be cold.

You still have to take the homemade route.

But you can’t imitate Netflix and focus on spending money on self-produced dramas.

But a video website can compete with the eight major Hollywood companies based only on funds?

Netflix didn't fare well in the end. After the traditional film industry giants and media giants began to develop their Internet business, they swept in with a large amount of content. Netflix's market value plummeted all the way, and finally succumbed to the skirts of the old media.

Down.

You can and must make your own products, but you have to cooperate with the eight major film and television companies.

At this time, the cuteness of Western capitalists is reflected. As long as the distribution of interests is reasonable, there is no business that cannot be done.