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Reading John’s article on the Philips WAC700 Wireless Music Center, I was thinking what impact the current digital music evolution has on families.

My current family music delivery at home is the following:

- My three daughters listen while studying or playing in their room (computer, hi-fi system or mp3 player)
- My wife listens a bit everywhere in the house depending her tasks or moods (transistor radio, hi-fi or mp3 player)
- The children watch DVD movies, listen music or play Playstation games in another entertainment room
- I am listening when working in my home office (another computer or hi-fi)
- When receiveing friends or when we want to listen to music, we do it in the living room where we have another hi-fi or iPod connected to it.

Currently we have a mix of old hi-fi systems (3), transistor radios (1), computers (3), Playstation (1), DVD player (1) and mp3 players (4)… that are about 13 different audio systems in my house only. If we count in the 5 phones each family member has; that makes upto 18 music devices in my apartment only (!) I am stunned looking at it this way.

Oh by the way, you have to know that some music tastes we share, but everyone wants to listen to his/her preferred music style to at different moments at different places.

Now, let’s see what kind of ideal music delivery system I have to look at my next purchase… I think I need a music distribution server; capable of streaming different kinds of music to different area’s in my apartment. Philips has thoughts about that, that’s cool; now I can look at other manufacturers too what they have released and then make up my mind.

But that’s not all, things are more complicated; let’s just look at my family’s music content now; well nothing special I guess… the usual, CD’s, DVD’s, FM radio, online radio and still some old records being played here once in while (vinyl quality is still such a different experience!)

But nowadays we have to digitalise our whole music catalogue in order to hear it on whatever device, wherever and whenever we like it. So, we copy our CD’s to our computers and beam/send them to our mp3 players. Last year however some record companies find a new way to protect their business: some cd’s are protected with some special security code so people can only listened to the CD on one device and cannot copy its content to mp3 players (!) Too bad… My kids didn’t like that move at all; Anastasia lost all her credit; my daughters will not buy her next cd, that’s for sure.

So what about the next mobile music industry plans and its consequences for my family?

My daughters download ringtones quite often; sometimes they download the same ringtones 3 times to have it on each phone. Personally I always thought ringtones are a fabulous rip-off (1 Euro or more for a silly piece of data) but ok technology moves on and now we are ready to download/listen to some real music on our mobiles. But given this possibility, will I have to pay 5 times for the same song for every mobile I have in my family?

No no no, I think this business model just cannot be right… Actually it looks quite silly looking it from this angle. I am willing to buy once for music I love and store that on some home server for family use. I think something is just not right here in this future mobile music distribution model.

I need to be able to buy once and distribute that music seamlessly to all devices in my family neighbourhood whether they are fixed or wireless devices. Another reason for me to believe more in a subscription model as viable for the future.