138: Chapter 138 Pushing the Boulder Uphill

The special negotiation with Universal Music regarding the joint label and the new cooperation model for "phantom singer" was held in a conference room overlooking half of Los Angeles.

The atmosphere was starkly different from previous music cooperation negotiations; it lacked the warmth of artistic resonance and was filled with the cold light of commercial terms.

In addition to the Senior Vice President in charge of artists and copyrights, the Universal side also brought an expressionless, fast-talking Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as well as the top lawyer from the company's legal department.

The escalation in their lineup meant that the other party was truly beginning to take the "new way of playing" that Alex had proposed seriously.

The focus of the negotiation quickly centered on the "Original Music Cooperation Agreement Framework."

"Alex, we highly appreciate the creativity." The Vice President's opening remained polite. "But this five-to-seven-year revenue sharing lock-in, which covers exclusive sharing across almost all commercial channels, this... has no precedent in the industry.

For many of our artist partners, their global distribution, merchandise development, and talent management form a complete system. Your framework is like a new pipe that has been forcibly inserted, which will disrupt many existing processes and profit distributions."

The CFO followed up by speaking with data: "According to our model calculations, based on the tiered sharing ratios in your draft, if a song becomes a massive hit, the program side could take 30% to 40% of the song's global revenue within five years. This does not even include the potential management costs brought about by the joint bargaining power you might demand. For a record company, this means we invest resources to cultivate artists and conduct global promotion, yet a significant portion of the long-term profits from a core single would be carved out. The return on investment model needs to be recalculated, and the risk increases."

The legal counsel's wording was more direct: "The definition of 'joint bargaining power' is too vague, and the threshold setting for 'major commercial authorization' also lacks industry standards. This could generate countless disputes during execution, or even lead to a stalemate in cooperation. We suggest modifying this clause to 'right to information and consultation for major matters,' and clearly defining the trigger conditions."

Pressure struck from three angles simultaneously: industry practice, financial modeling, and legal risk.

This was an expected combination of punches.

On Alex's side, Attorney Lauren was already fully prepared, and Marcus had prepared detailed comparative data and case deductions.

As for Alex himself, with the help of [Information Reception Filtering], he could more clearly grasp the core demands and potential bottom lines of each round of the other party's statements.

"Thank you all for your candor." Alex waited for the other party to finish their round of statements and responded in a steady tone, "We proposed this framework precisely because it breaks the 'no precedent' mold.

In past models, platforms or program parties often paid a one-time fee or only obtained short-term authorization, which is disconnected from the song's long-term vitality and value.

After creators gain huge exposure on the show, their subsequent development might have no connection to the program party; is this really reasonable?"

He paused slightly, letting his words settle.

"We are not trying to disrupt your mature systems, but rather hope to establish a fairer, more long-term-oriented cooperative relationship at the initial stage of the birth of the song, which is the most core asset.

For a partner like Universal that possesses a powerful global system, our model can actually reduce your long-term risks."

The CFO raised an eyebrow: "Oh? I'd like to hear the details."

"Whether a song can become a global hit involves huge uncertainty." Alex explained, "In the traditional model, your company needs to prepay high copyright fees or commit massive resources to gamble on an uncertain future.

Under our framework, your company's artists bring their original works; if the song's reception is mediocre, your company does not need to bear additional long-term sharing costs, and the initial investment is mainly the opportunity cost of the artist participating.

If the song becomes a hit, both of us, as early discoverers and co-investors, share the long-term revenue.

This is effectively swapping the 'excess profits' of a portion of hit songs for 'risk hedging' and 'deep binding' for all participating songs."

He interpreted this model from another angle.

"Furthermore, 'joint bargaining power' is not a veto right; it is to ensure that the commercial development of the song aligns with its long-term brand value, avoiding short-term behaviors that damage the song's life.

For Universal, which is dedicated to building long-term artist careers, this should be an ally, not an obstacle."

He cleverly pulled the other party's identity as a "system maintainer" into his own narrative of a "long-term value guardian."

The tug-of-war at the negotiation table lasted an entire afternoon.

In the end, both sides made concessions.

Universal accepted the core principle of "five-year exclusive revenue sharing," but successfully negotiated the upper limit of the sharing ratio to a lower range and refined the pace of the tiered decline.

Alex made more explicit limitations on the specific exercise conditions and scope of "joint bargaining power," adopting phrasing centered on "information and consultation," but retained moderate intervention clauses for extreme cases (such as low-price licensing that obviously damages the song's value).

More importantly, both sides agreed to jointly establish a small "Copyright Cooperation Management Group" specifically to handle the subsequent development of original songs generated in the "phantom singer" program that involve Universal's artists, attempting to minimize friction.

This could not be considered a complete victory, but it was an important milestone: for the first time, an industry giant had recognized and partially accepted this new cooperation logic in substantive terms.

Although there would inevitably be countless wrangling in future execution, the opening had been made.

The negotiation ended, and after sending off the Universal team, Alex felt a wave of mental exhaustion, but more so a sense of fulfillment now that the dust had settled.

He knew that the most difficult first step had been taken.

Over the next few days, Alex deliberately withdrew from the high-intensity negotiations, shifting his focus back to his primary roles as an "influencer" and "creator."

He fulfilled his promise to Taylor, and the two conducted a fun interaction on social media regarding the final trailer for "city of instantaneity," using riddles and clip releases to stir up another small climax among fans, while also incidentally doing a soft pre-heat for the "guess the identity" program concept.

He spent more time immersed in the creative workshop of "Flashpoint," pushing forward the follow-up planning for the "Urban Soundscape Wanderer."

This time, he chose a more personal theme: "The Sound of Home."

He returned to his home in Brentwood and used high-sensitivity recording equipment to record the sound of the coffee machine in the early morning, the rustling of wind blowing through the backyard leaves in the afternoon, the fuzzy human voices and traffic sounds gradually rising in the neighborhood at dusk, and the faint electrical hum of equipment on standby in his studio late at night.

He did not do complex processing; he only performed extremely delicate noise reduction, balancing, and spatial processing on these sounds, then simply spliced them together to form a forty-five-minute environmental soundscape work, titled "Home Day."

He uploaded it to the exclusive channel of "Voice of Truth" without any commercial promotion, writing only one line of introduction: "Perhaps, the most easily overlooked soundscape is just a turn away."

What he didn't expect was that this work, which had almost no melody, quietly spread among the core user base of "Flashpoint" and "Voice of Truth" due to its extreme realism and immersive experience.

Many people commented that playing it while working or studying made them feel a strange sense of calm and focus.

Some sound enthusiasts began to imitate him, uploading their own "Home Day" sound recordings.

A small trend regarding "daily life soundscape aesthetics" actually sprouted from this.

Alex could feel that when he was immersed in these subtle sound collection and processing tasks, abilities like [Information Reception Filtering] and [Environmental Perception Enhancement] were operating and honing in an extremely gentle way, as if these daily uses were also a form of meticulous polishing of his supernatural perception.

On the system interface, the proficiency of these abilities had almost imperceptible, tiny increases, and his popularity was also maintaining a stable and healthy trickle growth due to these continuous and high-quality content outputs.

• Historical Cumulative popularity: 116,500,000 points

• Available popularity: 35,530,030 points

• Ability Fine-tuning: Information Reception Filtering (Passive) has a slight increase in efficiency for distinguishing between "beneficial focus" and "ineffective noise" in daily non-combat/crisis environments.

This seemed to confirm one of his conjectures: the growth of supernatural abilities does not only rely on popularity redemption and life-and-death crises.

This kind of continuous, focused "application" that integrates it into secular professional work is also an effective form of tempering and deepening.

This gave his path of "quietly becoming extraordinary" a more solid daily basis.

One evening a few days later, he received a short report from Rex.

The report mentioned that the large talent management agency that had previously contacted their target singer had been in frequent contact with an emerging streaming platform, and behind this platform, there was a vague shadow of investment from "Summit Creative."

At the end of the report, Rex noted: "The other party seems to be trying to replicate the closed loop of 'platform + content + management,' but the entry point might be a more vertical field (such as electronic music, hip-hop).

The possibility of it posing direct competition to our "phantom singer" is moderate, but we need to be vigilant about their poaching of talent in niche fields."

Competition had never been far away; it had just changed tracks and postures.

Alex closed the report and walked to the balcony.

The lights of Los Angeles were just beginning to twinkle; he had just pried open a crack in the barriers of old rules, and new competitors were already trying to build new barriers.

But this was the norm of the commercial world.

He was like a man pushing a stone up a mountain; the boulder (new industry rules) was incredibly heavy, and every push was accompanied by pressure and friction, while others below were trying to build their own slopes in different ways.

He could not stop; he could only push harder, more steadily, and more intelligently, while ensuring that the ground beneath his feet was solid enough.

He returned to the room and opened the project schedule for "phantom singer."

The next milestone was to complete the formal model proposal and production budget, and begin substantive contact with potential broadcasting platforms.

That would be another tough battle.

However at this moment, he would rather put on his headphones and listen to "Home Day," which he had recorded, one more time.

Amidst those familiar yet strange sounds, he would find a moment of peace and accumulate the strength to continue "pushing the stone."

Staying grounded, every step counts.