My capital is quite large.

The R&D center is located on the ground floor of the Shenzhen Haofeng Networks Headquarters Building.

In front of rows of server racks shimmering with a deep blue light, several white engineers speaking heavily accented American English were conducting final data verification with Haofeng's local technical team.

This group of people were top tech talents that Li Feng poached from Silicon Valley, YouTube, Netflix, and other leading streaming media companies more than half a month ago, paying them several times their base salary and exorbitant settlement fees!

"Mr. Li, the underlying video transmission architecture has been completely reconstructed."

The platform project manager excitedly approached Li Feng, holding a test laptop. "The Silicon Valley team has brought the world's most advanced P2P cloud acceleration technology and H.264 video lossless compression algorithm! Our iQiyi and Bilibili are ushering in a revolutionary technological leap!"

Li Feng opened the test webpage and casually clicked on an episode of "Lurking".

There are no spinning circles, and no pixelated image quality.

In 2009, with generally poor home broadband networks, videos opened almost instantly, and dragging the progress bar was incredibly smooth. The image quality was also far superior to competing products on the market!

"Good, very good."

Li Feng nodded in satisfaction. "With this underlying technology as a safety net, it's time for iQiyi, this dormant behemoth, to show its fangs!"

With iQiyi's comprehensive upgrade in picture quality and smoothness, a massacre sweeping the domestic long-form video market has officially begun.

When netizens discovered that on this website called "iQiyi", not only could they watch videos without buffering and with clear picture quality, but more importantly, all the hottest, newest, and most classic movies and TV series on the entire internet were available here!

In just half a month, iQiyi's daily active users have increased exponentially, taking over half of the domestic streaming media market!

Meanwhile, Wang Wei of Tudou.com, Gu Yongqiang of Youku.com, and Jia Yueting, the owner of LeTV.com who was promoting ecological synergy everywhere, were all dumbfounded!

They watched their website's daily active user data plummet, and they were as anxious as ants on a hot pan.

"Quick! Buy the copyrights! Buy back all the movies and TV shows available on the market!" The CEOs of Tudou and Youku finally realized that the core of video websites wasn't UGC user uploads at all, but professional, high-quality copyrighted content!

However, when they waved the dollars they had just raised and searched the world for production companies to buy the online streaming rights, the replies they received made them feel like they had fallen into an ice cave.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Gu, but the exclusive online broadcasting rights for our show were sold to Shenzhen Haofeng Film & Television six months ago."

"Mr. Jia, it's not that we're disrespecting LeEco, but Haofeng Network has already emptied our entire library of old dramas from 2000 to the present!"

Absolutely no harvest across the entire internet!

Haofeng Network is like a greedy black hole. More than half a year ago, when copyright fees were as cheap as cabbage, it swept up 90% of the high-quality resources on the market!

Moreover, what made these video giants feel most desperate was that all the contracts Li Feng signed at the time, without exception, were all [permanent exclusive broadcasting rights with maximum exclusivity]!

No distribution, no sharing! Unfair terms and conditions have tightly locked the throat of China's streaming media!

"Li Feng is trying to drive us to our doom!" Boss Jia smashed a teacup in anger at LeEco headquarters, but there was nothing he could do.

Having lost their initial advantage, they could only watch helplessly as iQiyi used its copyright moat to slowly squeeze them out of existence.

……

Inside the CEO's office in Shenzhen.

Looking at the reports of iQiyi and Bilibili's rapid market success, Li Feng leaned back in his large leather chair and stretched comfortably.

"Boss, the funds for this month have been transferred to Mr. Lei's account. We currently have nearly 200 million yuan in our corporate account."

While massaging Li Feng's shoulders, Zhang Xinyu softly reported to her superior.

"Two hundred million..."

Li Feng closed his eyes and gently tapped his fingers on the leather armrest.

All major core projects are progressing steadily; what's needed is time.

However, in Li Feng's eyes, this huge amount of cash flow sitting in the account was a waste.

Money can only create more barriers when it accumulates.

"Since we have spare money and all our lines are in the incubation period, let's open up some new battlefields."

"That track that I used to look down on, now it seems like I can just casually place a few stones on it."

He pressed the internal phone and called in the vice president in charge of copyright procurement.

"Mr. Li, you called me here? Is it because we need to increase the budget for film and television copyrights?" The vice president pushed open the door and asked respectfully.

"The domestic film and television copyright market is almost saturated; there's not much good stuff left to buy. Next, let's turn our attention to the digital music market," Li Feng said calmly.

"The music market?!"

The vice president hesitated for a moment, then cautiously reminded him, "Mr. Li, didn't you say before that pirated MP3s are rampant in China, and digital music is unprofitable, a completely lucrative market? Isn't it a bit... risky for us to enter this market now?"

"We didn't touch it before because we had limited funds and wanted to use our resources wisely."

"Now that we're so poor we only have money left, it's natural that we need to complete the puzzle of the entertainment industry."

The vice president immediately became excited: "I'll take the team right away and sweep through all the major record companies! We'll monopolize all the music copyrights online, making them permanently exclusive! We'll make sure no other music players can even play a single song!"

"madness!"

Li Feng coldly reprimanded, "You need to use your brain when doing business! Whether it's film or music, you can monopolize high-quality resources, but you must never try to achieve an absolute monopoly!"

The vice president was completely bewildered by the scolding: "President Li, what... what's going on?"

Li Feng stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and his eyes gleamed with a precognitive glint in them at the future direction of policy.

He was well aware of how ruthless the anti-monopoly crackdown would be in the future.

In later years, Tencent Music spent exorbitant sums to buy up exclusive music copyrights across the entire internet in an attempt to establish a monopoly. The result? It directly attracted strong intervention from relevant authorities!

A national anti-monopoly decree mandates that all major music platforms [relinquish exclusive copyrights and achieve 99% open sharing of music copyrights]!

Tencent's absolute monopoly, built at a cost of tens of billions, turned into a complete waste overnight!

"Blindly throwing money at buying up all the record companies will only attract the attention of the relevant departments, who will then forcibly sanction and break them up."

Li Feng turned around, looked at the vice president, and held up one finger. "Remember, in the music market, what truly determines whether users stay or leave, and what determines the life or death of a music player..."

"Only that core [one percent]!"

The vice president seemed to understand but not quite: "Mr. Li, what do you mean by this one percent...?"

"The Gods of the Chinese Music Scene!"

Li Feng walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and quickly wrote down a string of names that would make the entire Chinese music scene tremble:

"Jay Chou, Wang Lihong, David Tao, and Lin Chun-chieh!"

"Add Chen Yixun to the list!"

"On the female singer side, secure the digital rights to top divas like Princess Diana, Jolin Tsai, Stefanie Sun, Fish Leong, and Angela Chang!"

Li Feng threw his pen on the table: "Don't bother with those second- and third-tier singers and viral internet songs. I wouldn't even care if I gave away 99% of their garbage copyrights!"

In the face of these dozen or so top-tier platforms, even if other platforms possess a library of tens of millions of songs, just the fact that Jay Chou's songs can only be listened to on Haofeng is enough to make hundreds of millions of users obediently uninstall other apps and flock to Haofeng's embrace!

That's the most lethal 1%!

"Mr. Li is brilliant! I understand!" the vice president exclaimed, suddenly enlightened. "So, how much budget should we approve for this copyright purchase?"

"At present, major record companies are still unaware of the arrival of the era of legal copyright."

"I'll approve a special fund of 80 million RMB for you!"

"Take this money and smash down the doors of Rolling Stones, Warner Music, Universal, and JVR Music! Lock up the digital rights to these dozen or so top singers for twenty years! Not a single year less!"

"Once we have the copyright, we also need a media player as a platform. Find one readily available on the market and buy it for me," Li Feng continued to instruct.

The vice president, quick-witted as ever, immediately suggested, "Mr. Li, currently the leaders in the PC market are Kugou and Kuwo. But if you look at the future of mobile devices... there's a relatively new mobile music player on the Symbian system that's been getting excellent reviews among college students, called [Tiantian Dongting]. They're currently preparing to develop iOS and Android versions and are desperately short of funds."

"Everyday Melodies?"

Upon hearing about this legendary media player that once carried countless people's youthful memories but ultimately met a tragic end after being acquired by Alibaba, Li Feng nodded.

"That's it!"

"Send another team to Hangzhou, along with the underlying code, to acquire Tiantian Dongting in its entirety!"

"After the acquisition, let the tech gurus who returned from Silicon Valley take over the complete restructuring of its underlying architecture! Add Viper audio algorithms and the highest-definition lossless audio decoding technology!"

"I don't expect the music section to make a lot of money. What I want is for it to act as a hook, to get netizens' last bit of spare time hooked onto Haofeng Network's ecosystem chariot!"

At this moment, the closed loop of pan-entertainment is perfectly fitted together by this last piece of the puzzle called music!