Spotify has just added a small button to its desktop programme that may help reduce your carbon footprint by letting you download playlists to your computer rather than streaming them every time.
With the new function, you can now save a playlist to your device so that you can listen to music and podcasts when you’re offline, similar to the download button on the Spotify app.
Announcing the feature on Thursday, the audio streaming giant said the function, available to paying subscribers only, is designed to help people save much-needed internet bandwidth.
As such it may help in the many homes where internet connections have been strained by more than one person working remotely during the pandemic.
But frugal streaming has also joined the likes of cycling to work and reusing coffee cups on the list of things people are being asked to do to help reduce greenhouse emissions.
Researchers have found that the rising popularity of streaming music is having unintended harmful environmental impacts.
Although the shift to streaming has reduced plastic waste from CDs, the impact of downloads on carbon emissions may, on balance, be harmful.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow in the UK and the University of Oslo in Norway found in 2019 that while both the cost of music and the plastic waste it has caused has fallen, the carbon emissions of the music industry had soared.
The researchers argued that the shift towards streaming recorded music from smartphones and computers resulted in a far higher amount of carbon emissions than at any previous point in the history of music.
Spotify says its new function, which comes in an updated design for the browser and desktop apps, is rolling out to users globally in the coming weeks. – dpa
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