“I believe streaming is particularly nefarious as a result of these detrimental impacts are taking place so far-off and in such an invisible approach,” says Joe Steinhardt, an assistant professor at Drexel College in Philadelphia who research the music trade and is the creator of the e-book Why to Resist Streaming Music & How. He calls streaming music “a disposable hear” due to the way in which an app retains pulling information from the cloud and never storing it domestically.
Nonetheless, it’s exhausting to attract a definitive conclusion on whether or not streaming damages the surroundings greater than shopping for bodily copies; its precise carbon footprint relies on many components. For instance, streaming a music or lyrics video on a TV consumes considerably extra electrical energy than utilizing an energy-efficient gadget like a smartphone. However then smartphones current their very own issues; they’re very vitality intensive to fabricate, and other people usually abandon them after a short while.
Whereas the general local weather impression of streaming continues to be being studied, lots of the issues it presents are undoubtedly exacerbated by the Okay-pop trade. The variety of occasions a music is streamed is factored into music rating charts, televised competitions, and awards. Artists with the very best streaming numbers are seen as extra profitable and consequently get extra sources and publicity from the recording firms, incentivizing followers to maintain streaming.
Because of this, many Okay-pop followers stream considerably greater than listeners of different genres. Within the streaming events, followers play newly launched songs for lengthy intervals of time as a way to present their help, increase visitors numbers, and hopefully appeal to extra followers to the songs. In 2022, Kpop4planet surveyed 1,097 followers (greater than 75% of whom had been in Korea) and located that almost all of them spent greater than 5 hours per day in streaming events. That’s nearly double the period of time a mean music shopper would spend listening to streamed songs, in keeping with the Worldwide Federation of the Phonographic Business (IFPI). In excessive circumstances, streaming events might push individuals to play the identical music on a number of units directly—typically muting them, so the music shouldn’t be even being heard.
“Fandom at this degree, whether or not it is Okay-pop or any fandom, is an inherently wasteful idea. It’s primarily based on how a lot can I waste to point out that I like you,” says Steinhardt. In any musical style, followers are used to expressing their love by way of extreme purchases as a result of it’s a monetary switch to the artists. Streaming launched new and cheaper methods to realize the identical purpose, however they’re however wasteful.
The sensible resolution, he says, might be to not ask followers to cease being so devoted. “I acknowledge there’s an actual worth in that,” says Steinhardt. “So the query is, is there a approach to try this that doesn’t contain overconsumption?”
Accountability for the streaming platforms
As a substitute of making an attempt to vary the person actions of followers, Lee believes, it’s extra essential to carry massive firms accountable for their habits. “We imagine that the environmental issues that the Okay-pop followers are affected by are brought on by the companies,” she says. “They’ve the principle keys to fixing the local weather disaster, as they’re emitting numerous carbon emissions within the provide chain.”
So when Kpop4planet began its music-streaming marketing campaign in 2022, it set its eyes on one explicit resolution: demanding that streaming firms swap to renewable vitality.