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“For roughly 120 years, music lovers liked to own what they listened to. We bought vinyl records, four-track cartridges, tapes, CDs, and so on, and stacked them pedantically in our living rooms. We wanted our tunes close and available, and the physicality of the sleeves and minutiae of the liner notes was part of the experience. Until one day it wasn’t. Though vinyl continues to have a niche, in 2017 many of us make do with Spotify, or a similar subscription service. It’s the same with movies and TV. Nobody in their right mind would buy hundreds of DVDs or Blu-ray discs now, especially at $20 a pop. Netflix does much the same job, and if it doesn’t, we can call on any number of other on-demand services.

(…) All sorts of products are becoming services, particularly in the business-to-business world. You can lease office carpets by the month, rather than buying them by the yard. You can rent lighting as a service (from Dutch giant Phillips). You can get tires by the kilometer (from Michelin). Or printing by the page. And on the consumer side, it’s now possible to rent clothes, bikes by the minute (like Citi Bike), washing machines, and nightly food kits (to name a few examples). These are all services that once were sold primarily as products…”

Click here to read the whole article written by BEN SCHILLER on Fast Company

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