Way back in 2011, Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek assured attendees at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference that “ownership (of music) is great, but access is the future.” That same year, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky echoed that notion to a San Francisco audience. “We’re moving toward an access society, where you’re not defined by the things you own but by the experiences you have.”
According to a study published by Time magazine and the Aspen Institute, nearly half of American adults are already engaging in the access economy. And as it grows, it’s making access to innovations and luxuries as easy as hailing a Lyft or logging into Netflix. If pink mustache-adorned cars and cozying up in strangers’ homes are already part of your norm, here are some companies expanding the spectrum of available experiences and goods to us.
Solar Panels
The upfront costs of installing solar panels are prohibitively expensive, even with the eventual payoff of lower electric bills and moral superiority. Yeloha, currently available in Massachusetts and coming soon to New York and Vermont, offers homeowners the ability to become “sun partners” and tap into cheap, sustainable energy from someone else’s roof.
Sex Dungeons
Billed as a “sex positive homesharing community,” KinkBNB allows people to rent spaces designed and equipped for sexual satisfaction, from “classic dungeons” and deluxe “fetish clinics” to quaint “BDSM studios.”
Drones
Renting professional-grade, creative production equipment isn’t novel, but online services like KitSplit make a potentially painful task more convenient by democratizing the ability to tell visual stories with cutting-edge technology like drones and RED cameras.
Pets
Those animals we embrace as family can cost almost as much as actual children. For those lacking the funds, Walkzee lets you borrow a shelter dog to take for a walk—a service that’s beneficial for both human and animal.
Illustration by Emily Lin