Music is my life. Averaging six hours on Spotify daily, I listen to music as I commute into Trinity, as I study in the Lecky and as I drift off to sleep. I crave the familiarity of my favourite artists and am excited to share my new music finds with my friends.
Listening to Spotify feels harmless, easy and undisruptive. We just put our headphones on and the music flows. But with Spotify users at a record high of 696 million, is our music streaming truly without fault?
On their website, Spotify declare that they are aiming for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2030. They have also created several podcasts and playlists dedicated to raising awareness about climate change, such as Spotify’s Climate Champions Network, a collection of podcasts about the climate crisis and solutions. In April 2024, Spotify presented a collaboration with several UN organisations and EarthPercent with a project called Sounds Right, recognising the value of nature. NATURE, an artist profile, releases tracks of nature sounds and also collaborates with major artists such as Ellie Goulding and Tom Walker; streaming NATURE’s songs results in 50 to 70 per cent of the income being diverted towards high-impact conservation efforts.
The company also claims that most of its GHG emissions (98 per cent) fall outside of its direct control. Most, they say, emerge from cloud services, advertising, marketing and commuting — to overcome these, Spotify says, it aims to optimise efficiency related to cloud and data storage, launch staff sustainability training programmes, test sustainable practices for marketing, reduce office footprint, and the like.
That’s all well and good when this news comes from Spotify themselves, but what is the reality? It’s no surprise that holding so many audio tracks is a strain for data centres and a high power demand, especially if that power comes from fossil fuels. Furthermore, the data centres require high water wastage to cool down their systems. A song’s journey, starting from server farms, travelling through underground cables and being stored at a more local location before it is transmitted to your device, is not invisible.
The Environmental Defence Initiative claimed in 2024 that our streaming activity emits 0.57 billion tonnes of CO2 annually – about 1.4% of the Earth’s total CO2 release. They add that, “streaming music nowadays has a larger impact on the environment than a century’s worth of physical recorded music.”, due to an explosion of repetitive streaming culture.
Beyond the footprint of data centres, Spotify has recently delved into AI and video streaming features, further amplifying its emissions. AI is used to examine user preferences and target specific ads at them, and also through the new feature of DJ X, implemented in 2023. DJ X uses OpenAI technology to analyse a person’s tastes and create an algorithm of songs it thinks you will enjoy. The company’s DJ is still in its early stages of development, but it looks as though its implementation will result in increased computational needs (further emissions) and increased strain for storage. As for video streaming, the Carbon Trust has found that, in Europe, video streaming produces 55g of CO2e an hour – 50 times more than basic audio streaming.
Holding a company accountable is important, but looking at our own role in streaming may be more so. Luckily, there are certain steps we can take to minimise our carbon footprint when it comes to streaming our favourite tracks. Rather than repeatedly listening to the same song a million times, you can download the song to your local device or onto Spotify itself. It is also worth it to stream using WIFI instead of mobile data. On the app itself, we can switch around a few settings for a greener experience, namely, listening with a lower resolution, opting not to watch the music videos and turning off auto-play features.
This article was in no way written to dissuade the reader from abandoning their music. That is not possible, even for me. After all, I write this article with my Spotify on in the background. I only ask that we remain conscious of our actions and do the little things to make our world a bit greener.
