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After half a century of further environmental degradation, artists tend to be more circumspect about the future.
Musicians addressing the environment head-on only represents one side of the music industrys engagement with the climate crisis.
Theway we listen to music impacts the environment.
Streaming music uses a significant amount of energy, even though the technology seems to make sound feel immaterial.
Nate Sloan: Could you give us an overview of the different stages of musics materiality?
But between 1950 and 2000, every single major or commercially successful recording format was made of plastic.
Were talking about LPs, 45s, cassettes, and CDs.
These are all different kinds of plastic, but they are all fundamentally plastic formats.
Its in the ether.
But you say that we might be misunderstanding the ecological impact of data-driven music.
So these things take up space and, by taking up space, require energy.
And so storing and transmitting and downloading all of this musical data requires energy.
So when we are streaming music, we are burning coal.
We are burning uranium.
Were using energy, essentially.
And yet perhaps that alternate future wouldnt be destructive to the way we enjoy and celebrate music.
Can you imagine what a more sustainable vision of music consumption looks like?
So, what do we do?
I call that solutionism.
And I think that solutionism is very much a part of the problem.
The real ways of addressing the problem require us to address what we actually want in the first place.
Music has this draw for people politically, personally, in terms of community.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
