this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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As Spotify moves to video, the environmental footprint of music streaming hits the high notes (theconversation.com)
submitted 1 week ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 32 points 6 days ago (4 children)

European average carbon footprint for video streaming as producing 55g of CO₂e per hour. This CO₂e or carbon dioxide equivalent is a comparable measure of the potential effect of different greenhouse gases on the climate: 55g of CO₂e is 50 times more than audio streaming and the equivalent of microwaving four bags of popcorn

What the fuck is this article? This is not helpful in any way. Yeah du-doy the thing that uses electricity "creates" carbon. How bout we remove fossil fuels from the grid then?

1.1g per hour is ridiculously efficient. An average meal in the Western world is ~3Kg.

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 days ago

That's one of my pet peeves, when people use relative comparisons to overstate things that have very small absolute differences.

55g of CO2 is basically nothing. A gallon of gasoline represents about 2400g of CO2 emissions when burned. So for a typical vehicle that gets 30 miles per gallon, 55g of CO2 is basically the equivalent of driving 0.6875 miles (1.1km).

It's less than the carbon footprint of a cup of coffee (60g).

Or, alternatively, eating a single quarter pound hamburger would be about 3 kg of CO2, or 55 hours of video viewing at this rate.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

55g of CO₂e is 50 times more than audio streaming and the equivalent of microwaving four bags of popcorn

How much is that in football fields?

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

0.54% of a foosball table. Or 0.00000000000000042% of the length of two average elephants.

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

It's to put the blame on the consumer. Fuck these cooperate overlords. I'm hungry, when do we eat?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago

I'll keep streaming and just eat less popcorn. I've been needing to cut back. I blow a kiss to the sky. I got your back, Mother Earth. I always check the resin identification codes before I recycle plastics, too.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 6 days ago (3 children)

To minimise the environmental footprint of your own music streaming, use Wi-Fi rather than 4G or 5G. If you listen to a song repeatedly, purchase a download to play. Use localised storage rather than cloud-based systems for all of your music and video files. Reduce auto-play, aimless background streaming or using streaming as a sleep aid by changing the default settings on your device including reducing streaming resolution. And turn your camera off for video calls, as carbon emissions are 25 times more than for audio only.

Lol no I won't.

What a stupid, bizarre and illogical article. It clearly shows that the key is in moving to renewables yet it still argues for the users also doing this sort of tiny useless gestures. I suspect it's AI-written at least in part.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 6 days ago

The devices they're talking about are also still turned on. The power usage of the network requests is incredibly small. Switching from cellular to wifi will make the biggest difference, but who the hell isn't already on their home wifi network? Plus, at least me personally, I have my liked songs downloaded on Spotify to save data usage. I suspect others may as well.

This is like the folks worrying about the water usage of AI. Environmental concerns are a real problem and there are tons of things to focus on, but they pick such a weirdly specific, negligible, non-issue.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Use localised storage rather than cloud-based systems for all of your music and video files

This is good advice tho. I also chose to read it as a Spotify endorsement of the high seas ;)

[–] mang0@lemmy.zip 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You do realize that it's harder to move to renewables if the energy required keeps increasing? Higher bandwidth usage requires expansion of internet infrastructure to account for peak usage which increases the amount of energy used, not only for the manufactured hardware (which will likely turn to e-waste at some point) but also to keep the infrastructure running. I highly recommend reading research about the sustainability of the internet.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No, since the article doesn't mention anything of that sort. I really, really doubt that in the world of crypto mining and AI training the average people streaming some music and music videos will make a substantial difference. Your degrowth-oriented approach sounds like it would just solidify the already highly monopolised market, as any new players or innovation can be met with the "wastes too much bandwidth" hammer, as is this new service by Spotify right here.

I highly recommend reading research about the sustainability of the internet.

This is the first article that I get on Google. Now, as they say, "I ain't reading all that" (I probably wouldn't understand most of it), but I did take a look at the abstract:

Decarbonising electricity would substantially mitigate the climate impacts linked to Internet consumption, while the use of mineral and metal resources would remain of concern. A synergistic combination of rapid decarbonisation and additional measures aimed at reducing the use of fresh raw materials in electronic devices (e.g., lifetime extension) is paramount to prevent the growing Internet demand from exacerbating the pressure on the finite Earth’s carrying capacity.

Sounds good to me! With no mention of having to limit our internet usage.

And if reducing bandwidth waste really were that important, it would have go both ways anyway, with the providers optimising their content (probably forced to do so by regulations in some way).

[–] mang0@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Sounds good to me! With no mention of having to limit our internet usage.

You don't have the power to decarbonize all electricity or to create and enforce laws to reduce the rate of e-waste. Until this changes, you have the power to limit your bandwidth usage, which is something that would result in less e-waste and less energy usage (and inherently less carbon emissions since all electricity isn't decarbonized). You're essentially saying "the paper says you can fix the problem in the future so I don't give a fuck about the problem now", which is not very bright.

And if reducing bandwidth waste really were that important, it would have go both ways anyway, with the providers optimising their content (probably forced to do so by regulations in some way).

My god. This might be the most naive thing I've ever read. This would be like saying "if carbon emissions were really that bad, oil and coal would be illegal". Guess what? The climate will be (and has already been) irreversibly damaged if we don't drastically reduce the amount of carbon fuel being used and no regulations have successfully come close to getting the necessary drastic reduction. Turns out everything that's bad doesn't magically get solved by regulations, especially when rich companies which rely on e.g. carbon fuel and bandwidth have major influence over politics due to their massive amount of resources.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

You don’t have the power to decarbonize all electricity

From the article:

Location also affects how carbon emissions are managed. Germany has the largest carbon footprint for video streaming at 76g CO₂e per hour of streaming, reflecting its continued reliance on coal and fossil fuels. In the UK, this figure is 48g CO₂e per hour, because its energy mix includes renewables and natural gas, increasingly with nuclear as central to the UK’s low-carbon future. France, with a reliance on nuclear is the lowest, at 10g CO₂e per hour.

This is a massive difference, and clearly doable, nothing that would be limited to the distant future.

So I get this right? I'm naive for expecting govt regulations to put companies' behaviour under control, whereas you're realistic by expecting hundreds of millions of people deciding to systematically minimise their Youtube/Tiktok/Spotify/Netflix/Zoom usage? Hmm, alright.

And yet in an another comment you also expect that Spotify shouldn't introduce video streaming, without any external regulation but out of pure goodness of their hearts?

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

These companies will use the lowest possible bitrate with the newest possible codecs to balance quality and bandwidth. They will also default to a medium quality when it comes to picking audio quality.

I’d say they are doing their best already just to save bandwidth costs.

Just look at YouTube and how they set the video quality (resolution) as low as they can get away with.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Same for Youtube for ages. But Yt has separate channels for audio, why can't they just switch the video channels off, if the tab is out of focus?

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ads. Ads are more important to them the anything else.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ads don't have audio? That's news to me.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

Marketers don't want to make ads that both work with and without the video. Radio ads and tv ads are put together differently. Ever listen to a video ad on audio only and have no idea what they're selling?

[–] axum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As if this fucking matters all while the ai hype literally spins up power plants just to handle the energy usage

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago

It's so so frustrating. AI is cool, I get it, LLMs are impressive, but we're in such a bubble right now. Every company is like "damn, that other company is doing a cool thing with AI, we need to make sure our shareholders think we're doing cool things with AI too!" So they make flashy AI things and it feeds back into the cycle because obviously other companies and their shareholders see it, because these companies are publicly traded.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Wait until they learn about Youtube, TikTok and Instagram.

[–] mang0@lemmy.zip -2 points 6 days ago

Youtube and tiktok are video platforms (instagram turned into one some years after creation). Telling them to stop having videos is equivalent to saying they should cease to exist. Spotify is a music streaming platform. Telling them to stop having videos has a minimal impact on their business model, which is evident by the fact that Spotify was widely successful before they started including videos.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I never really had much interest in music streaming services, given the wealth of storage on modern devices, and the ease of ripping audio from almost any source in existence.

Do we need a constant internet connection to listen to music? Is it that hard to use VLC, and just buy/download what you want, and rip what you can't?

[–] FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Using VLC is easy. Having good musical taste and finding the time to renew your library so it doesn't grow stale is hard.

I know, I used to download all my stuff and now I just get YouTube music started on a piece I like and let it autoplay forever while I work, do a tabletop campaign, play videogames... I find that this way, I find the music it plays to be in the right mood 98% of the time.

It disgusts me to say it but it just works and saves me a lot of time.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago

I guess a big factor would be constant access to the internet on your mobile devices. I usually travel through internet "dead zones" (no cell coverage, wifi, or just in a building that doubles as a Faraday cage), so I find having offline music a lifeline for staving off boredom. That could be why it appeals to me more - plus the whole "they can't take it away" side.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Music discovery is the greatest feature besides having most music available without having to rip it first. Shared playlists are fantastic as well. The platforms automatically recommend music for you, can play music similar to one song you like, and so on.

How do you share a curated playlist of songs with someone else without something like Spotify?

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 days ago

A .zip archive :) or for that matter, a YouTube Playlist that you can just use YTDL to copy for yourself

[–] nivenkos@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And carting CDs and vinyl around used a lot more energy still.

We should focus on increasing renewable energy production, not degrowth.

[–] ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago

...we can do both...