For the Fall issue of No Depression, I wrote about the unprecedented environmental impacts of digita
For the Fall issue of No Depression, I wrote about the unprecedented environmental impacts of digital music and streaming. There’s a myth that because listening to music digitally involves no vinyl records made of plastic or cardboard sleeves, that it somehow must emit less carbon. The opposite is true: the current era of music streaming has led to the highest levels of carbon emissions ever produced by recorded music.The piece largely centers on an interview with University of Oslo professor and researcher Kyle Devine, the author of Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. We talked about the harsh material realities that power current listening habits (“Because to store and transmit data over the internet requires electricity, it’s often the case that when you’re streaming music online, you’re probably burning coal, uranium, or natural gas”) as well as the broader impact of the on-demand instant-gratification culture that streaming is part of.The carbon footprint of data centers, fiber optic cable networks, and consumer electronics combined with the massively higher rate at which on-demand consumption is happening are all factors, Devine explained. Here’s something else he said that stuck with me: “We now have so many more people doing so much more listening so much more of the time. Once you add up the aggregate energy effect of billions of people streaming billions of songs and albums all of the time, and the fact that all of that takes electricity…that is what contributes to this overall picture that the streaming culture of music that exists today is a greater contributor of carbon emissions than any other previous format…. Streaming a file off the internet is much more efficient than producing an LP. That efficiency gain is actually outstripped by the increase in amount of listening that is going on today.”I also spoke with author and University of Glasgow professor Matt Brennan, who co-authored a study with Devine last year titled “The Cost of Music,” covering the economic and environmental realities of streaming. He succinctly explained why the environmental impacts of music streaming can be hard to grasp: “We know that flying is environmentally bad. The message has got out there on that. But part of the reason that people understand that is that in order to travel on your holiday, you have to go to an airport. You have to physically put yourself in this massive building and see the infrastructure that makes that possible. You don’t do that when you listen to music on your phone. You don’t have to go to the server farm and see all of the energy that’s being consumed to make [that] possible. So people don’t tend to think of music as having an environmental impact.”The piece contextualizes digital listening within the broader material impacts of internet infrastructure, and argues that since streaming relies so heavily on data centers owned by Google (where Spotify data is stored), Amazon and Apple, music communities might consider seeing themselves in solidarity with actions taken groups like Google Workers for Action on Climate or Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.Devine had illuminating things to say about the desire for “solutions” in the music industry: “People want to know, ‘What do we do?’ They want a utopian pep talk or a Hollywood ending… I’m not especially hopeful. It’s a bit grim.” As a political ecologist, his primary interest is not providing a consumer guide to the most environmentally friendly options for music consumption. “Each of these formats, in the history of recording, comes with upsides and downsides…The purpose of this research I’m doing is more to call attention to these bigger systems of problems and inequalities, so that people may demand more of those systems in terms of genuine responsibility and transparency.”The full piece can currently only be read in print in No Depression, an ad-free, non-profit, reader-supported magazine operating since 1995. I’d also highly encourage those interested in the topic to seek out writings by the authors and researchers interviewed for this piece. -- source link