How Streaming Music Could Be Harming the Planet (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Current digital technology gives us flawless music quality without physical deterioration. Music is easy to copy and upload, and can be streamed online without downloading. Since our digital music is less tangible than vinyl or CDs, surely it must be more environmentally friendly? Even though new formats are material-free, that doesn't mean they don't have an environmental impact. The electronic files we download are stored on active, cooled servers. The information is then retrieved and transmitted across the network to a router, which is transferred by wi-fi to our electronic devices. This happens every time we stream a track, which costs energy. Once vinyl or a CD is purchased, it can be played over and over again, the only carbon cost coming from running the record player. However, if we listen to our streamed music using a hi-fi sound system it's estimated to use 107 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, costing about $20 to run. A CD player uses 34.7 kilowatt hours a year and costs about $7 to run.

So, which is the greener option? It depends on many things, including how many times you listen to your music. If you only listen to a track a couple of times, then streaming is the best option. If you listen repeatedly, a physical copy is best -- streaming an album over the internet more than 27 times will likely use more energy than it takes to produce and manufacture a CD. If you want to reduce your impact on the environment, then vintage vinyl could be a great physical option. For online music, local storage on phones, computers or local network drives keeps the data closer to the user and will reduce the need for streaming over distance from remote severs across a power-hungry network.

Comments

Wrong.

[Dunbal]

streaming an album over the internet more than 27 times will likely use more energy than it takes to produce and manufacture a CD.

Completely failing to account for the energy cost in disposing of the CD and returning its constituents to the ecosystem. And it's not just the CD - it's the CD case, the plastic it is wrapped in, the store receipt, the plastic bag from the store. Even if they accounted for all this on the manufacture side (I doubt it), they didn't account for it on the disposal side. No one ever thinks about the garbage, which is why we end up in the mess we are currently in. It takes a lot more than 27 listens worth of energy. At the end of the day heat dissipates a lot faster than plastic. Our planet constantly sheds heat on its night side. A few GigaJoules here and there makes no difference.