Question about the carbon footprint of streaming music

Honestly, I was just reading an article on the BBC website last night and it said streaming one hour of music uses about the same energy as charging a phone halfway. I found that stat kind of shocking because I stream music all day at my desk. Does anyone know if there are better ways to listen, like downloading playlists instead?

4 comments

4 Comments

paul8718d ago

Wait, doesn't downloading just move the energy use to one big hit instead of a bunch of small ones? I feel like the real issue is the power source for the data centers, not the act of streaming itself. If they're using clean energy, streaming all day seems fine, but if it's coal power, then yeah it's bad no matter how you get the music.

olivert7818d ago

That BBC stat is way oversimplified though, it ignores how efficient data centers have become. Downloading a whole playlist you only listen to once is probably worse.

the_mia18d ago

My friend in Portland switched to downloads last year for this exact reason.

ruby_wright18d ago

Makes total sense, and honestly it feels like the only real way to own anything anymore. I've been slowly moving my whole music and movie library to hard drives because stuff just vanishes from streaming services. It's a pain to set up, but at least you know it's yours and the quality doesn't suddenly drop because of a bad internet day.