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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?
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paul875mo 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.
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olivert785mo 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.
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the_mia5mo ago
My friend in Portland switched to downloads last year for this exact reason.
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ruby_wright5mo 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.
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