Usership is the new ownership
Remember when music was a physical product? From records to LPs to cassettes, music used to be a tangible good sold in stores like Tower Records and Sam Goody. Think back to those (now vintage) CD cases and media storage racks filled with hundreds of albums -- a physical testament to a devotion to music. Fast-forward to today and things are a bit different. For one, music is largely a digital experience with audio files downloaded onto various devices. Although music ownership still exists, there's another trend where music is a less a possession and more an experience. From Pandora to Rhapsody, several emerging services provide listeners access to music on-demand. Rather than own a finite number of songs on a device, on-demand services allow streaming from a large library of shared digital music. People pay to use versus pay to own -- an emerging concept that extends far beyond music.
If you keep up with any of the major publications, you may have noticed several articles referencing the changing relationship between wealth and ownership in today's economy. Due to the recent housing crisis, this Wall Street Journal article explains the misconception of home ownership (home ownership no longer yields the same returns compared to 30 years ago) and re-defines "the new American Dream" as renting instead of buying. Another hot topic in the press during the past couple weeks has been around collaborative consumption, a movement I referenced in another blog post as "the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities." This phenomenon, which has been covered by TED, The New York Times and WIRED has been spearheaded by two visionaries, Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers. This duo recently co-authored a book on the topic called, What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption which is set for release in just a couple weeks. Coincidentally, another book called The Mesh: Why The Future of Business Is Sharing focuses on eliminating the burdens of ownership through shared access, and is set to hit bookshelves later this month as well. Both describe a new way of doing business, citing several players disrupting the notion of ownership in favor of usership. Previously, I've mentioned Swap.com as the leader in swapping. Services like AirBnB and CouchSurfing are revolutionizing extra space by allowing people to rent out spare futons, bedrooms, apartments and homes. ZipCar and fellow MassChallenge finalist, RelayRides, are changing the face of car ownership. Lisa Gansky's Mesh Directory highlights hundreds of others (including Rentcycle) leading the way, and this video by Rachel Botsman features a few powerful case studies too:
As an evangelist for communal exchange, it's great to see collaborative consumption enjoying its time in the sun with some much-deserved buzz. But the funny thing is, this is not a new concept. The notion of paying for access versus ownership has been around for quite some time. What would you say if I told you there are several age-old institutions built upon a dedication to usership? These are things you and I use everyday. Consider some of our public commons that have been enjoyed for centuries without a need to own. For example, we use roads yet we don't own them. All citizens are granted access to streets and highways through our payment of local taxes and tolls -- in essence, we pay a subscription fee to use the roads. Similarly, we can borrow books from the library. Library books grant accss to information on-demand, where content is shared among a community of users.
The Internet takes this concept to a whole new level, opening doors to all sorts of shared content. There's a high probability that in the not-too-distant-future, we will not "own" any music, books, movies, etc. The truth is this is already possible (as I referenced with the music example earlier), but the principle is only just getting its bearings. Soon, instant access to all these media through subscriptions and on-demand services will become mainstream... without having to own anything. Chances are you're already doing this through Netflix's instant streaming capability. You might be surprised that this is the same premise behind cloud computing where servers aren't owned, but shared through a pay-per-use model. The same principle applies to software as a service (SaaS) where licenses are not owned, but accessed on a subscription basis. Shared access is all around us.
This pay-per-use model is at the core of renting. You pay to use things only when you need them. You can stop paying at any time, at which point, you return the good until you need it again. This is what renting is all about -- reducing the complexities of ownership through usership. This is also at the heart of communal exchange. Collaborative consumption and mesh businesses are not necessarily new, but rather, part of a larger trend of shared access where people pay for use instead of ownership. Rentcycle is leading the way for collaborative consumption and is proud represent the rental opportunity by making the process easy for the mainstream. We strongly believe that this ideal of shared access is here to stay.
The best part is: this is only the beginning.
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