You are contributing to the destruction of the environment then by purchasing physical media ( btw does it get anymore boomer than having to own physical media). They need to use fossil fuel, etc to get your media made and then shipped to you. When you die it goes to a landfill and takes 100 years to decompose… contaminating the ground water in the process.
Also realize you are a marketers dream ….” Hey guys we know a dude in Chicago who will buy our reissue of a reissue of a reissue even though he owns two other versions without these bonus tracks of Ringo farting into a tin cup”
It depends. While music streaming has taken over as the primary method of music consumption — a 2020
Deloitte article confirmed that streaming "accounted for 80 per cent of U.S. recorded music revenues in 2019" — our overwhelming reliance on accessing millions of songs at our fingertips is adding up to environmental damage fast.
According to
Energy Tracker Asia, an average individual streams approximately five hours of content daily, including non-music content such as film and TV via services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and more. "This results in releasing up to 1.57 million tonnes of CO2 emissions," the article states, "or 0.57 billion tonnes annually." Sharon George, a Keele University lecturer in the department of environmental sustainability, told
New Statesmanin November 2021 that five hours of streaming was the carbon equivalent of one plastic CD case; 17 hours of streaming equalled one vinyl record.
Those numbers may not sound bad at first when you're thinking about your individual output of carbon emissions, but that same article illustrates just how alarming it really is when you look at it from a collective, global standpoint. New Statesman's own calculated example: "Spotify streams of Olivia Rodrigo's hit single, 'Drivers License,' since January 2021 is greater than flying from London to New York and back 4,000 times, or the annual emissions of 500 people in the U.K."
There’s no magic bullet re: consumerism and environmental impact. And there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. That being said, my copy of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour is an environmental sunk cost and I could listen to “Driver’s License” as many times as I want and it doesn’t get more costly in terms of carbon/resources (beyond powering up the player) where as each individual stream adds to the total impact given the cost of the infrastructure of server farms, workers doing tasks to maintain 24/7 uptime, etc.
At any rate, individual media habits are likely not the primary mover when it comes to climate catastrophe. There’s probably way more to be done re: crypto mining and transportation and major corporate polluters and military activity. And in terms of individual choices you can make, veganism or even vegetarianism is probably the big change you can make to significantly reduce your carbon footprint in a meaningful way in terms of cumulative impact.
