• by Barry Lowenthal , Op-Ed Contributor, June 14, 2011

Owning stuff is important to me. Or at least I thought it was. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think that it's better to subscribe instead of own, because by subscribing, I get a lot more choice and can easily stay a lot more current. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was never a hoarder. In fact, I hate clutter. Every year, my tax account cautions me about the amount of clothing donations I claim. If I don't wear it for two seasons, it's donated. But that doesn't stop me from owning scores of shirts, dozens of shoes, and numerous pairs of dark denim jeans.

I also like furniture. I like having two homes, and I like gadgets. I think I own every generation of iPod. When I was younger, I collected autographs. They were stored high up on a shelf and some were safely tucked away, but they were mine.

I liked collecting music in lots of forms, including vinyl, tape and CD. When iTunes came out, instead of paying someone to upload all my CDs, I spent weeks uploading my collection and thoroughly enjoyed reminiscing as I listened to many albums I hadn't listened to in years.

Even as I painstakingly uploaded my music, I still enjoyed knowing that each and every song was mine. Interestingly, I started thinking about my music in terms of songs instead of albums. Maybe that was because I finally saw how many songs I actually owned. I knew how many CDs I owned, and I probably could have estimated how many songs I owned. But until I saw the total at the bottom of my iTunes library, I didn't know for sure. I thought it was pretty cool to own 6,000+ songs.

As I grew more dependent on iTunes, I become more comfortable buying songs instead of albums -- and my relationship with music started to change. I started to think of my music collection in terms of gigs and songs instead of artists and albums. I even started to back up my computer because heaven forbid anything should happen to my hard drive. After all, I heard those crashed hard-drive horror stories.

Over the last few years, mostly because of the digitization of music, my relationship with music has changed. It's not about owning, it's about knowing.

The size of my collection isn't so important. What impresses my friends are the bands I know before they do, not how much music I own. What's frustrating: I can no longer showcase my digital music collection in a bookcase. (This is the same issue that booksellers have with e-readers. No one can see what you're reading.)

The music sharing sites, legal and illegal; the notion of songs instead of albums; gigs instead of bookcases; and the demise of the big record stores where I would peruse the aisles looking for new bands, has changed my relationship with music.

Remarkably, music ownership was starting to become a nuisance.

My shuffle would work on my home computer but not my work Mac. My iPhone would only have certain play lists and my BlackBerry was just a mess. Amazon, Google and Apple are planning to change that by launching various cloud music services, which should make it very easy for me to access my music on multiple devices and never have to worry about backing up my hard drive.

But I think what Spotify -- the amazing music-sharing company from Sweden that's swept Europe and will hopefully be coming to America later this summer -- is doing is even more remarkable.

Spotify says I no longer should own music. Imagine that. I can access over 10MM songs and not own even one of them. It's a subscription service. For about $10 a month, I can rent music and access the music from various devices. Typically, $120 affords me 10 albums or 120 songs.

Mostly of that music I won't listen to more than a few times. But now, I can rent 10MM+ songs for $120. Why would I ever buy when I can rent! What Spotify has realized is that my relationship to music ownership has changed. Almost two generations have grown up since Napster institutionalized music thievery. Now, Spotify is changing it again. Spotify is making renting easy. And smart.

The Internet has disrupted so many businesses and changed so many behaviors. It's changed how we communicate, how we work, how we stress, how we bank. When stuff becomes digitized, it seems to become immediately less permanent. But even when it's seemingly less permanent, digitized stuff is always available because storage costs are nearly zero. That combination -- infinite storage coupled with less permanence -- has dramatically affected what it means to own.

When resources aren't scarce, I don't have to own. I can subscribe. Now I subscribe to access abundance. Cloud technology coupled with digital music means I don't have to own albums. I can rent. And I can get infinite supply. Amazing.

I wonder what the next industry to be completely upended will be. PDAs made the Rolodex obsolete. Google and Wikipedia made the encyclopedia irrelevant; and they've also redefined the library. Email has changed the role of the post office. Kayak and Travelocity have changed how we travel. And Amazon changed how we shop.

Spotify and other similar services are going to change the meaning of ownership, and not just music ownership. That will be a remarkable feat, as owning has always been something we've aspired to.