You left out the correct perspective: compare ALL of music to the production of Portland Cement alone, by carbon emissions.
Thing is, to bring back cd’s there is a need for a demand . Do younger people consum music in the form of cd’s ? No, they don’t. We have to adapt.
Maybe he knows the difference. And maybe some people reading him don’t.
I used to have one of these SL-P1200. It was such a beautiful player… I especially loved seeing the disc rotating, just like you can see a vinyl.
I have teenagers (aged 10-15) coming to my shop to buy Queen, Guns’n’Roses & Nirvana cds all the time.
So, sorry but you’re wrong there pal.
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I find these kinds of studies really unconvincing. As they admit right below the graph, all of the externalities related to the production and transportation of a bunch of physical objects is not taken into account. The paper, the ink, the plastic jewel, the packaging, transporting all of these objects to be assembled, same process with the CD player itself, the gas in the person’s car that drives to work to do all of these things, etc.
Meanwhile, all of the above are effortless and nearly energy free in the digital music world. Impossible to know for sure but I’d guess it would be very hard to make streaming or digital downloads more harmful to the environment than CDs/LPs.
Digital downloads like music and videogames are shoved through people’s throat. For publishers these are far more profitable and convenient. I will only start to consider digital downloads if I get the right to sell it. But even then I’m sure people will just wait for Steam sales.
All you do when buying digital is renting, really.
The videogame industry is pretty shit. Like for example, when you buy a physical copy of Elden Ring for the new Xbox, you buy a 600mb file. The remaining data needs to be downloaded. So you’re basically buying a physical serial number.
Or “physical” Switch games that have no cartridge but only a piece of paper with a download code. It’s insane. And this market is actually huge. So much plastic literally wasted
Young people consume CD’s, vinyl and tapes. I’d say it’s mostly middle aged and older who have stopped buying physical media.
I recently got a PS4 for free and made a point to buy all games in physical format because I wanted to both actually own them and future proof if Sony decides to shut down their servers. Well fuck me, those discs don’t necessarily contain the game and at the least you need to download huge patches anyway. I felt like such a dumbass for thinking thing were the same as in the gamecube era when I last owned a console.
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Cool, I am glad I am then. I was just talking from my experience. A lot of younger collegues don’t even have CD players around me …
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But wait, queen , nirvana, guns … Do they buy more actual music ?
Maybe, once again, from what I can see, the people that are in their 20’s around me just have Spotify accounts …
This sounds like a win/win to me.
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Why do everyone oppose vinyl, CDs to streaming…but don’t consider buying digital copies?
I bought a lot of digital copies. They are on my personnal storage whose carbon footprint is nothing compared to streaming. No network packet to be sent all over the world. No network stream everytime I listen to the same song.
Is that so hard to buy and keep music locally?
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Actually, streaming is really bad too. When you consider the server farms necessary to pull it off, rare earth minerals in our devices and their artificially reduced replacement cycles. Not saying CDs and LPs are good for the environment — they’re not! — just that streaming only hides its damage.
For sure streaming services downplay their environmental impact. To your points, I would say that much like electric cars, server farms have the potential to be more green depending on which source of energy they use. If there is a huge shift to renewable energy, streaming would benefit greatly from that whereas physical media will always be limited by, well, physical resources.
On your second point regarding the rare earth minerals in our devices like phones and computers, at this point everyone has them already, whether they are using it to listen to music or not. CDs and records require their own hardware to actually play them.
Regardless, my main point is simply that studies comparing environmental detriment between quite different products always oversimplify. At the end of the day streaming vs physical commodities are just way too different to compare, and consumers treat them differently as well.
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No Ice caps left mate. My sister told me it was 42 yesterday in the south of england where she lives. I live on the east coast of Australia, we havent had 42 for a couple of years now, shit tons of rain though.
Anyway back on topic. Streaming sucks. Buy music. Buy digital, buy CDs, buy tapes (tapes are cool) buy vinyl. None of it matters…
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Kinda addressed in my last post but streaming and physical are so different with different externalities they are hard to compare. My gut tells me streaming is hard to beat, digital downloads even better.
The one big thing that streaming (and DLs of course) has over physical media is that everyone already has a phone/PC. The choice isn’t between a phone and a record player, it’s if you will get a player in addition to the phone you already have.
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I built my pc, but I’ll be forced to trash it because not compatible with Windows 11, and 12 after that. I tried to keep my phone forever, but I’ll be forced to trash it because I can’t get any new critical updates anymore, and the battery is dying. I did an image search for lithium mining just now, and 
I should start a vinyl collection, and disconnect from the internet of things a few hours a day.
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The streaming vs physical media debate has left me thinking that maybe only acoustic live music is environmentally justifiable, but then again manufacturing 20 something year old dreadlock dude with a guitar is pretty carbon intensive.
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