The era of digitalization has made it easy to access a lot of things like movies and music, but this is impacting the world in a great way. Digital streaming services have become a primary cause of excessive carbon emulsion. While this booming streaming industry has captured minds across this universe, it also has caused simultaneously degrading impacts on the environment. Consumers are often praising better and more impactful video and audio streaming options, and leading names of this streaming industry have allowed them to stream and entertain themselves with effective nuances of dopamine boost. If you study the intriguing figures of the thriving music industry, you will know that 80% of its revenue comes from online streaming applications. From customized playlists to AI-powered tools, streaming options are widening its variety compelling people to stream more and invest more time in streaming applications.

But at the same time, it also has impacted the environment negatively causing irreversible damage. Comprising the extensive music-streaming platforms like – Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud, the number of subscribers is 200 million active users and over 130 million paid subscribers. And the income that comes from the online music streaming application is over 20 billion dollars. According to a report published in 2019, music streaming revenue in Southeast Asia amounted to US$254 million which has increased to over US$300 million in 2023, in that region. These music applications often allow their paid users to download songs allowing them to stream offline and on multiple devices. And by 2026 the number is forecasted to increase up to US$88 million.

Radzi, the owner of Teenage Head Records (a Malaysia-based indie record store) said, “Cassette culture isn’t going away anytime soon. The tape revival, which started kicking in in Malaysia two years ago, has been a good thing. New bands have something to put out. Tapes are also not as expensive as records. You can now release something that is affordable and also very artsy.” The ramifications of switching from cassettes and vinyl to online streaming apps can have an even greater impact on every species of this world, living and breathing in this atmosphere. For a long time, across several centuries, music was something people had to pay for and now, music is available free of all costs making it accessible for everyone but, it is gaining a lot of derived impacts on this environment.

Vinyl is short for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and the production process is not at all eco-friendly. It involves toxic acids and on top of it, this process consumes a lot of energy. Andie Stephens, associate director of Carbon Trust (corporate carbon footprint measuring company), said that the environmental impact of the energy used to create vinyl involves the extraction of crude oil from the ground along with its subsequent dispensation and industrialization. On the other hand, Recycling of PVC is also an issue. This component takes over 100 years to decompose. In short, the idea that streaming is a zero-carbon medium for listening to music is a complete misconception. Every streaming platform depends on a network of energy-intensive server farms that includes computers should have some kind of Carbon emission.

In 2012, Dagfinn Bach wrote “The Dark Side of the Tune: The Hidden Energy Cost of Digital Music Consumption”, here he has mentioned, “An expected by-product of digital growth has always been a decrease in the perceived heavy environmental cost associated with physical products.” And data centers generate carbon footprints. According to Kyle Devine from the University of Oslo, said, “A very different picture emerges when we think about the energy used to power online music listening. Storing and processing music online uses a tremendous amount of resources and energy – with a high impact on the environment.” Kyle led research on the environmental cost of recording formats. In a way, we can say that streaming music is more environment-friendly than other

It is for sure; that music streaming companies are unaware of the environmental costs and impacts in derives. According to a report released in 2019, Spotify emphasizes its use of renewable energy to shift from traditional data centers to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). GPC promotes clean data storage by purchasing renewable energy centers to “zero out the entire carbon footprint of [their] energy use.” Following the footprints of Spotify, other music-streaming platforms like Apple Music and SoundCloud rely on Amazon Web Services. And Amazon Web Services also tackles their high energy use by investing in renewable energy. But, this is not the same as going for a “Zero Carbon” alternative. Sustainability has become a greater priority in the last few years and there’s no real enticement for these companies to self-regulate their carbon footprints. This has to be a well-motivated approach to stream music and it has become a self-motivation campaign for most of them.

If you are wondering if is there any other more sustainable option for music streaming then the answer would be hard to say. And “The Future of Music Streaming” depends on these streaming platforms how they continue to advance in this part to create a more inclusive and sustainable approach for streaming music or videos. Music streaming is gaining popularity across the globe and data centers are responsible for it. It emits more carbon emissions than every other alternative method of listening to music. However, there are not a lot of options that you can do to regulate this emission and increase accountability. The music industry demonstrates the shift towards data centers and asks the question of whether sustainable music-streaming options innovated through evolved approaches of data processing. The Internet has various impacts on this world and direct causes include several ground-breaking aspects of harming the environment.