Spotify’s plan to turn audio into video won’t be good for the planet
One of the most underreported things about streaming is the amount of energy that’s required to power all those servers, routers, transmission networks, websites, computers, tablets, phones (and increasingly, power hungry-AI) that we need to listen to music this way.
Greenly, a company that looks at the carbon footprint companies create and how to manage it, took a look at Spotify’s impact on the environment.
The current Greenly study estimates that Spotify will be responsible for 187,040 tonnes of CO2 emissions, roughly equivalent of 12 x the carbon footprint of Vatican City. That’s up from 67% tonnes in 2021. An hour of listening by the average user results in 1.04 grams of CO2. That adds up to about 276 grams per year. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that Spotify has about 678 million users worldwide, those small numbers add up fast.
Spotify is also moving more into video, which is going to exacerbate the situation. If all Premium users switched to video streaming, another 3.92 million tonnes of CO2 emissions would be added to the atmosphere annually. To put that in perspective, this is equivalent to adding 374,000 commercial airline flights a year.
And you thought that streaming was environmentally friendly. Read more here.
