As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.” To this extent, music permeates every corner of, and is a great energy that helps us go on with, our lives. But if Earth itself did not exist, our songs would not exist either. Most people may have never thought about how the joyful music destroys the environment. Let's find out how enjoying music every day promotes global warming, and what solutions are there to prevent it with CAH.

The Music Industry and The Environment

The Problem with Tons of Albums: Especially K-pop Albums

Most singers release albums, and fans buy the albums to enjoy the music more fully. Especially, lots of K-pop fans buy huge amounts of albums while showing their affections to the singers they stan. The Korea Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM)[1] officially criticized K-pop culture which is encouraging overconsumption through a press release titled "K-pop culture encouraging overconsumption, where does the 60 million plastics go?" in 2022 November. K-pop physical album sales are continuing to rise. Sales exceeded 10 million copies per year in 2016, and have steadily increased to the point where more than 6 billion total K-pop physical album sales have been confirmed as of September 2022 according to the recent investigation of KFEM. Fans buy multiple albums, not just because they want to own the albums, but also for a chance for other special prizes or items. KFEM criticized that entertainment companies are encouraging consumers to over-consume and speculate by using the 'photo card' sales strategy. Since a photo card is a 'random box item', fans need to buy more copies of the same album to increase their chances of getting a photo card of their favorite member. Not only that, but in order to win the fan signing event, which has a higher probability the more albums you purchase, some fans buy and throw away hundreds of plastic albums. Now, let's find out why the album is related to environmental issues. An album is mainly composed of a CD, a photo album made of paper, and some plastic wrap. CDs are made from a plastic called polycarbonate, which takes a million years to decompose naturally in landfills. Therefore, in order to dispose of it, it is sent to an incinerator, and a huge amount of toxic gas is generated during the incineration process. In addition to that, considering all the other elements in the album, the album sales increasing in an unimaginable amount every year can be seen as very burdensome to the environment.

Environmental Issues Arising from Concerts

To enjoy music, fans around the world don't just listen to music and buy their favorite artists' albums. There are concerts and festivals where people can enjoy songs to their fulness. However, this also can’t avoid the connection with environmental pollution. In addition to the one-off stage equipment, enormous environmental pollution occurs in festivals, from the transportation used by artists to the plastic consumed with food and drink containers or souvenirs. For example, Coachella Festival, the largest music festival in the United States, generates about 1,612 tons of waste annually. Also, singer PSY's Soaking Show, which was recently controversial because of the 300 tons of water used for one show, also highlighted the environmental damage caused by performances.

Streaming and Global Warming

Some might think ‘If that’s the case, if I just listen to songs without doing anything, everything will be alright!’ Unfortunately, however, streaming or listening to music on YouTube using invisible technology also emits carbon. First of all, streaming requires the process of transferring music files from a company's data center to your smartphone via a network and Wi-Fi. And data centers and Wi-Fi facilities that make all this possible require enormous power, resulting in a lot of carbon emissions. One might wonder if these processes are comparable to problems of physical albums, but ironically, compared to about 150,000 tons of greenhouse gases generated by records in 2000 when CDs were most commonly used, the music industry's greenhouse gases increased to about 200,000 tons in 2016, when CD use was relatively reduced and streaming became commonplace. In other words, the greenhouse gas generated by streaming is definitely an amount that cannot be ignored. According to The Carbon Trust[2], 55g of carbon dioxide is emitted by one hour of streaming, and Korea's representative streaming platform Melon had 3.7 billion service hours last year. In other words, it emitted more than 200,000 tons of carbon last year alone!

Green Steps for our Eco-Friendly music industry

Can there possibly be no way to enjoy music while protecting the Earth? As more and more fans boycott the situation where they must feel guilty about polluting the environment when they just want to listen to their favorite singers and songs, various entertainment companies are showing eco-friendly actions. As a representative example, there is an ‘eco-friendly album’. Singer Chungha's album released in February 2021 was the first K-pop album made with eco-friendly materials. Recycled paper was used for packaging materials and photo albums, and materials which are difficult to recycle, such as plastics and laminates, were minimized as much as possible, including the plastics that hold the CD. Soon after, large agencies such as YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment also released eco-friendly albums. Another solution is a platform album. A platform album, which is an online album, makes all elements included in the physical album, such as CDs and photobooks, accessible through an online app, except photo cards that fans want to own. Platform albums are cheaper than physical albums and are reflected the same on album sales statistics sites, so K-pop fans can purchase them comfortably. Abroad, the world-famous British rock band Coldplay temporarily suspended their world tour considering the impact of their concerts on the environment and expressed hopes that their decision would have a positive impact. Like this example, awareness of environmental problems that are produced by concerts are growing.

In this article, CAH looked into the wounds people made on Earth by enjoying music. Music Declares Emergency[3] is encouraging the music industry, artists, and fans around the world to actively pursue change in the music industry for the sake of the environment through its “No Music on a Dead Planet” campaign. It is acknowledging that only on a ‘alive’ earth can we enjoy music. Why don't we start caring a little more so that people can continue to enjoy songs while living their life on our beautiful planet in the future?