Sustainability Unpacked Part 4 – The Hidden Cost of Streaming

This article is a part of Funktasy’s Sustainability Unpacked series, where we tackle all sides of the sustainability discourse within music, fashion and lifestyle. 

Streaming has taken over virtually everything.

Music is released directly onto multiple streaming platforms, providing instant access to stream whatever, whenever and however many times you want, as long as you cough up the monthly fee or watch recurring ads. Movies and television shows now follow the same model, with audiences increasingly relying on streaming over traditional methods of media consumption. 

The days of depending on physical releases, radio airtime and tabloid articles for publicity are over, whether people like it or not. Uploading music to streaming platforms is a must for artists now, seeing as streaming accounts for nearly 80% of revenue in the industry. 

Streaming does not come without environmental risk, though. It may seem more sustainable since streaming is intangible, but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there’s no impact.

The Moment Between Pressing Play and Hearing Sound

Unlike digital downloads, streamed music is not permanently stored on your device. Instead, it exists on a server, which stores millions of songs and sends the file directly to users when requested. These servers are kept in data centers, warehouses lined with tens of thousands of computers that run nonstop. 

Data centers are a massive contributor to carbon emissions, energy consumption and water use. They never turn off, consuming loads of electricity in order to process requests, store data and connect to the network. The constant power overheats the servers, which is combated with cooling systems that often rely on water. Many data centers also rely on fossil fuels for power. 

Every time you press play on a song, your phone requests the file from a data center, which then finds, copies and transfers the file to you and sends it through fiber-optic cables, cell towers or Wi-Fi routers. The caveat is that the server does not deliver the music as a single file, but rather in small chunks. The device and server must remain in ongoing communication until the song is played through, also known as buffered streaming. 

What Role Do Individual Listeners Play?

On an individual level, it might not seem as though streaming is something of concern. There were an estimated 818 million music subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, a number that is only rising. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact impact that we have as individuals. Our listening time varies and our locations vary; some countries, like Canada, are abundant in renewable energy sources and therefore have more sustainable data centers. When you look at the estimates, an individual streamer does not have that much of an impact. The average Spotify user in 2024 was estimated to have contributed 276g of CO₂ emissions per year, which is equivalent to driving a car about three-fourths of a mile. It doesn’t seem like much, but when you account for the fact that Spotify had 640 million listeners in 2024 and Apple Music had 95 million, you can see how it would add up. 

The Collective Consumption Cost

Some sources estimate that the emissions-to-stream ratio, specifically on Spotify, rounds out to roughly 1.05g CO₂e per hour of streaming. This number is based off of estimates on Spotify user emissions in 2024, scaled up from the company’s 2021 emissions report to reflect growth in user base, as Spotify stopped including those statistics in 2023. 

To put it into perspective, and taking these estimates into consideration, think about Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ smash hit “Die With A Smile.” It currently has over 3.3 billion streams on Spotify and was the highest-streamed song of 2025. It’s a masterpiece song by two masterpiece artists, but its carbon emissions are anything but. 

Accounting for the track’s length, the average emissions per hour and the amount of streams, the song has emitted approximately 247 million grams CO₂e since its release. In comparison with the individual estimate of driving three-fourths of a mile, the streams from this track alone equate to roughly 610,000 miles, or around the Earth’s equator 25 times. That’s just for one song. 

Spotify’s Integration of Music Videos

The most energy-intensive format of streaming is video. The demand for everything to be in 4K resolution, the push to binge television shows and leave on autoplay, all of these contribute to climate change at a far higher rate than music streaming. The average listener emits 276g CO₂e per year, but with video’s estimated 55g of CO₂e per hour, that amount is emitted in roughly five hours. 

Spotify began slowly rolling out music videos onto the platform in 2024, exclusive to its 268 million premium members. If enough demand is there, the platform may be inclined to expand its offerings and distribution. Coupling the carbon emissions from hours of video streaming with the miniscule emissions from plain music streaming, this service could have a massive impact on our environment.

What Can We Do?

Besides advocating for more sustainable data centers, there isn’t much to do about the global impact of streaming. With hundreds of millions of listeners, the amount of people needed to make a lasting change seems unfeasible. But each individual can change their listening habits to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Arguably the easiest ways to combat the impact of streaming is to switch back to more traditional forms of listening: physical media, such as vinyl and CDs, have seen an increase lately and are readily available for purchase. Of course, physical media comes with its own environmental challenges, but at the very least, they are a one-and-done deal. You purchase the product and listen to it as many times as you want, no data center required. 

It’s also encouraged to download your music digitally. Even downloading them and streaming offline on Spotify makes a difference. Since your phone is not constantly pinging the server to send over data, it requires far less energy and is still just as convenient. There are certainly other things that consume more energy, emit more carbon and use more water. But when you’re falling asleep to “10 Hours of Rain Sounds,” consider downloading it to your device first.