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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Over the weekend, Rentcycle celebrated two firsts: our first television debut and our first mention in one of our favorite publications, FastCompany Magazine!  It's great to see increased media coverage and interest in renting as a concept.  Look for more of this as Rentcycle brings renting even further into the mainstream!

The TV segment which aired on ABC News Philadelphia was all about how more people are turning to renting as a means to save money.  The report highlighted the economics of renting, stating, "the more expensive an item is, the more money you'll save by renting."  The segment touched on unique items people might not realize can be rented, referencing services like REI (camping gear), BookSwim (Netflix for books), Guitar Affair (guitar rentals) and ZipCar (on-demand cars).  Rentcycle was cited as, "a really great aggregator of the things you can rent," by rental expert Eric Ginsburg.  Watch the 2 minute segment for yourself here.

The September issue of FastCompany Magazine came out over the weekend with an interesting article in their Next Strategy section.  Titled "Welcome to the Copy Shop," the article highlights some of the web's most successful businesses with examples of startups who strive to apply similar business models to new industries.  Top business models included Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp and Zappos, among others.  Not too surprisingly, Rentcycle was compared to OpenTable which is reminiscent of the TechCrunch article that dubbed us OpenTable for local rental businesses.  Having utmost respect for OpenTable, we are flattered and have aspirations for similar success.  Another interesting piece of the article highlights companies with models similar to Netflix.  Included on this list are Bookrenter and Chegg for textbooks, RentTheRunway for high fashion, and SproutRobot for seeds.  Since Rentcycle serves this space, we are huge fans of these innovative rental services.  Read more by picking up a copy of FastCompany and turning to page 44.

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One of the nice things about renting is the simplicity of the concept.  The benefits of renting are relatively easy for most people to grasp.  We save money by renting when we can't affort to buy.  We help the environment by sharing the things we already have, reducing production.  Makes sense, right?  There's another advantage many overlook when it comes to renting -- space savings.  Take a second to think about your home.  Now, think about your closets.  Are they empty?  If you're anything like me, they're stuffed beyond capacity -- usually to the point where I can barely shut the door.  Some may say this is because I live in a city apartment and have limited closet space, but I think this lets me and others off the hook way too easily.  Whether you have 1 closet or 10 closets, chances are you'll find ways to fill them.  Why is it so easy for us to accumulate so much stuff?  Because this is how we've been programmed to consume.  In order to remain savvy, we're forced to upgrade to the latest tech gadgets that claim to be "the next big thing."  In order to remain fashionable, we're forced to keep up with the latest styles that fluctuate drastically from season to seaon.  After awhile, we end up with a pile of old iPods and shoes that do nothing but take up space, adding zero value to our lives.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, touches on the current era of humanity as "the age of abundance" where people have way too much stuff -- more than they'd ever need.  He discusses this in the context of the self-storage industry -- an industry built around an over-abundance of posessions.  He comments, "What is the unmet consumer need that self-storage is trying to satisfy?  It is a problem called too much stuff.  Not a problem that affected our parents and grandparents.  But the self-storage industry in America today, an industry devoted entirely to finding a place to house people’s extra stuff, is a $22.6 billion, that is a B, billion dollar a year industry.  The self-storage industry is larger than the motion picture business in this country."  I've also read it's an industry that's growing faster than McDonald's.  When we get to the point that our material goods exceed the space we need to functionally live -- to the point that we need to purchase additional space exclusively for housing our idle assets -- we should probably admit there's a problem.  You've heard of hoarding, right?

Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, created a documentary called The Story of Stuff.  In the video, she presents a rapid-fire, often humorous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”  The documentary may present a one-sided, extremist viewpoint about the lifecycle of material goods, but it certainly opens up a dialogue around how the production of more and more stuff is destroying our lives and our planet.  Leonard's primary thesis states, "you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."  We need to introduce a cyclical process -- something that is sustainable.

Fortunately, renting is a cyclical process.  You take a material good that has been produced and reuse that product over and over and over, until its value has been fully maximized.  More sharing = less production = less waste.  I'm not suggesting that renting is the cure-all for our society's obsession with possession.  But it's certainly a step in the right direction.  What most people don't realize is you can rent just about anything you can buy.  From designer dresses to iPhones to Christmas Trees, there's no shortage of rental goods.  So next time you need a stereo for a party or a power saw for a home improvement project, consider renting.  Your closet (and your planet) will thank you.

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From the rise of the hybrid car to Al Gore's crusade against climate change, awareness toward environmentalism has come a long way in the past decade.  Even kids are getting schooled in sustainability as Sesame Street celebrates its 40th anniversary today, unveiling a two-year environmental curriculum dedicated to being green.  But as much progress that's been made on the education front, there's still much to be done on the solution side.  It's not easy.  This global crisis is so gnarly, it sometimes feels impossible to untangle ourselves from the mess we're in.  The issues are staggering -- water shortage, gasoline dependence, pollution, deforestation, species extinction, depletion of natural resources -- the list is overwhelming without a quick fix in the bunch.  And who's responsible -- corporations, governments, countries?  What impact (if any) can individual human beings have on this widespread panic?  How can the collective footprints of a society catalyze a planetary shift?  As I said, it's a gnarly problem.

So what can the everyday person do about this mess?  We've all seen the "top 10 lists" with tips and tricks for going green -- from turning off the lights to planting more trees.  Well, I have a new one you probably haven't considered.  And maybe one you've never heard raised in the green conversation before -- renting.  Sure, there are areas where we do this very well -- movies, cars, vacation homes.  But what about all the other stuff we use (or don't use) on a regular basis?  Think about all the things we own, but rarely engage.  Might be those power tools rusting away in the garage.  Or the formal dress gathering dust in the back of the closet.  Every body's got something they own but rarely use.  And it's not our fault.  This obsession with possession comes from society's love affair with materialism.  British psychologist, Oliver James identifies possession as one of the 21st century's greatest struggles in his controversial book, Affluenza.  There's a certain status that comes with owning.  There's a certain convenience that comes with having things at one's finger tips.  But if we're only using these things once in a blue moon, what's the point?  If our cultural attachment to ownership is going to change, people need to be inspired by three things -- cost, convenience and a desire to make the world better.  By my calculations, renting addresses all three.  To most, the cost and convenience aspects of renting are obvious.  Claiming renting can save the planet may sound a bit more far-fetched.  But is it?

There was a great article in this past weekend's Scotland on Sunday, titled "Life for Rent."  This is the first article I've seen that articulates the real opportunity for renting and the immense impact it can have on our world.  Kudos to the author, Dani Garavelli.  The article came out of a new report from one of Scotland's governmental groups, claiming, "the secret weapon in meeting climate change targets might be overcoming our obsession with ownership."  The report goes on to say, "we should stop buying so much and start renting instead," identifying five categories of goods most suitable for renting.  The positives of renting versus owning have always seemed clear to me -- renting means sharing the things we already have, effectively reducing production and waste.  It's a communal solution that stands at the cornerstone of all things green.  But until this report, I haven't had much in terms of hard data to prove renting's environmental implications.  What Scotland's Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) uncovered is that, "shifting a fifth of household spending from purchasing to renting would cut emissions by about 2 per cent -- or 13 million tonnes -- of CO2 a year."  Finally, some numbers to back up what many already know is a good idea!  This conservative estimation around renting could have huge implications for our planet.  I spotted another insightful article in Rental Management Magazine, which quotes Angie Hicks of the popular consumer ratings site, Angie's List.  She points out, "When consumers share products, they're reducing their carbon footprint by reducing the amount of resources used and waste produced.  Consumers are learning that there are a variety of rental options that can meet their short-term needs."  It's my hope that more pro-renting testimonials like these continue to come out.  Because, as we've learned, the more education, the more action.

As a rental startup living in the possibility of having an impact, Rentcycle is inspired by others who share this vision and are making headway toward this common goal.  Companies like AirBnB and ZipCar are doing their part to promote sharing as a way of living that can mean big things for our Earth.  We are working our way through this gnarly problem together toward a leaner, greener future.  A future where less is more and sharing is the norm.  As the famous paradox states, "we don't need everything we own and we don't own everything we need."  Next time you feel the urge to buy a new power drill, give renting a shot instead.  The planet thanks you.

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