Your playlist may be more polluting than expected

You're brewing coffee. The morning playlist hums through your smart speaker. No discs, no wires—just frictionless sound, seemingly weightless and clean. But that quiet soundtrack has a footprint. A recent carbon audit from sustainability firm Greenly estimates that Spotify will generate 187,040 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions in 2025—a 67% increase from 2021. Not from trucks or plastic packaging. From data centers, network infrastructure, and most critically, user devices. Yes, your phone and headphones count too.

Streaming feels like the opposite of pollution. It’s invisible. Yet it’s increasingly one of the most energy-intensive ways we consume media. And this isn't just a Spotify issue—it’s a broader signal of what happens when convenience becomes infrastructure. Every new user adds more load to server farms, more data through undersea cables, more electricity usage across time zones. And unlike one-time emissions from manufacturing physical products, streaming creates a recurring energy drain—one that grows every minute playback continues.

The problem isn’t that we listen to music. It’s that digital consumption has scaled so dramatically, so effortlessly, that we no longer notice how much energy is involved. It feels passive. But every play is powered. And every powered moment draws from a grid still deeply tied to fossil fuels.

When physical CDs faded, the assumption was simple: less stuff equals less waste. That’s partially true. Streaming has eliminated shipping, packaging, and production emissions. But it’s added a new layer of invisible infrastructure—one that scales with every tap of the play button. Spotify, which holds about 32% of the global streaming market, reported 678 million users in early 2025, up from 406 million in 2021. That massive growth—though good for business—amplifies electricity use across the entire digital chain.

Servers run nonstop. Transmission networks span continents. Each stream calls on cloud storage, algorithms, and connected apps. And while a single hour of audio emits a relatively modest 1.04g of CO₂, multiply that by hundreds of millions of users and daily habits, and the scale becomes impossible to ignore.

What makes this form of pollution especially tricky is that it doesn’t show up where we live. It’s abstracted—offloaded to faraway data centers and undersea cables. The climate impact isn’t in your living room, but in the fossil fuels powering server farms across time zones. There’s no visible exhaust, no discarded shell. But the system hums on behind every press of play. We’ve simply outsourced the smoke—without realizing it’s still rising.

Here’s where things get murkier. Since 2023, Spotify has stopped including user device energy use in its official carbon footprint reports. This matters. Because while servers and data centers are often part of carbon calculations, the electricity needed to power your phone, Bluetooth headphones, or smart TV during streaming is now excluded—effectively minimizing the full climate impact in public disclosures.

Greenly reconstructed the missing piece using user growth models. By including the energy used on the listener’s end, they recalibrated the footprint to reflect a truer picture. Their estimate? 276g of CO₂ per Spotify user per year, assuming average usage. That might not seem like much. But emissions accumulate quietly, especially when behaviors become constant.

There’s another layer coming. In 2024, Spotify quietly began adding music videos for select tracks, a shift that nudges users toward more screen time—and more data consumption.

While audio emits just over 1g of CO₂ per hour, video can produce up to 55g. That’s 50 times more. If all of Spotify’s 268 million Premium users switched to video mode full-time, emissions would surge to nearly 4 million tonnes annually. It hasn’t happened yet. But the infrastructure is being laid. And when platforms offer frictionless upgrades—more video, more personalization, more motion—it often becomes a default, not a decision.

There’s a cultural pattern at play here. Most digital experiences—music, messaging, even AI—are designed to feel ethereal. We swipe, we stream, we sync. No smoke, no exhaust. But the real system powering that fluidity is very physical: warehouses of servers, underwater cables, batteries, and energy grids still largely powered by fossil fuels. Spotify is cleaner than vinyl or CD production, yes. But that doesn't mean it’s clean. Especially when usage isn’t replacing something else—it’s multiplying.

Just as fast fashion scaled because it made buying cheaper and easier, digital media consumption has exploded because it removed physical friction. No storage space needed. No price tags per play. And that frictionless loop often leads to overuse—not moderation.

Part of the challenge is that digital services are framed as inherently efficient. “Cloud-based” implies weightlessness. “Smart” suggests low waste. But those metaphors hide the fact that these platforms require round-the-clock infrastructure—servers that never sleep, networks that always transmit, interfaces that encourage constant engagement.

And because the pollution doesn’t show up on our fingertips, we don’t count it. Yet energy is consumed, emissions are generated, and habits compound—often unconsciously. The illusion isn’t that digital is bad—it’s that it’s neutral. And neutrality, at scale, adds up.

Spotify is only part of the story. It represents roughly a third of paid audio streaming globally. Add in platforms like Apple Music, YouTube Music, and radio digitization, and the emissions footprint of music-as-a-service grows exponentially. And unlike physical goods, which are constrained by production or logistics, digital streams scale infinitely. You can’t buy 10 CDs a day—but you can stream hundreds of tracks with zero marginal cost.

This is the paradox of dematerialization: the more abstract consumption becomes, the harder it is to see its cost. But the emissions are real. They just arrive without packaging.

You don’t need to quit music. Or cancel Spotify. But reframing your habits can build new rhythms—ones that align more closely with the sustainable living we often assume digital life already offers. Start with downloaded playlists. Offline listening reduces redundant network calls and data transfer energy. Choose audio when possible. Use wired headphones or speakers instead of Bluetooth chains. And consider creating listening rituals—intentional music moments—rather than default background loops that never end.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about awareness. The same kind of attention you’d give to reusing a tote bag, turning off lights, or unplugging a charger applies here too. Sustainability isn’t only about what we buy. It’s about what we repeat.

Digital life feels clean because it’s distant. But distance doesn’t erase impact. It delays our awareness of it. Every playlist, every stream, every autoplay adds to a system that runs on real energy, made in real places, with real consequences. And if the goal of low-impact living is to align our habits with our values, music streaming offers one more place to pause, reflect, and tune in—not just to the sound, but to the systems behind it.

Because what we don’t see still shapes the world. And what we repeat becomes how we live. Choose rhythm, choose awareness. There’s a deeper invitation here too. When we decouple pleasure from waste, we gain the power to re-design how joy flows through our lives. Music can be immersive, connective, and deeply nourishing—without defaulting to excess. The question isn’t whether we stream. It’s how consciously we do so. And whether our clicks create more care—or more carbon—in their wake.