Music streaming has a far worse carbon footprint than the heyday of records and CDs – new findings..




It is easy to get nostalgic for the era when most music lovers bought LPs. They would save their pennies for a Saturday trip to the local record store, before heading home clutching their glorious new vinyl in a plastic bag to drop the needle on the turntable and listen on repeat.




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We conducted archival research on recorded music consumption and production in the US, comparing the economic and environmental costs of different formats at different times. We found that the price consumers have been willing to pay for the luxury of owning recorded music has changed dramatically. It is possible to demonstrate this by translating plastic production and the electricity used to store and transmit digital audio files into greenhouse gas equivalents (GHGs). This shows that GHGs from recorded
music were 140m kg in 1977 in the US, 136m kg in 1988, and 157m kg in 2000. By 2016 it is estimated to have been between 200m kg and over 350m kg – and remember that this is only in the US.






https://theconversation.com/music-st...indings-114944