The financial industry is not the only sector caught up in the green wave. Popular musicians have been pushing for more sustainable practices of late, though in their own ways and not to the detriment of their own profits.
Perhaps the act with the loudest voice on the matter is British rock band Coldplay, who in November 2019 announced a break from touring until an “actively beneficial” alternative could be found.
Frontman Chris Martin said in an interview with BBC that the next tour would be “the best possible version… environmentally”, and the band “would be disappointed if it’s not carbon-neutral”.
The four-piece band need not have worried then — they were forced to sit out from touring their eighth studio album, Everyday Life, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. It would take two years before Coldplay announced their eighth tour, which began in March 2022.
The Music of the Spheres World Tour ranked the third-highest-grossing concert run ever. It played for six nights in Singapore in January and is still ongoing; the tour is set to run until November.
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Along with the tour announcement in October 2021, Coldplay unveiled a 12-step plan, reportedly developed over two years with environmental experts, setting out how the band aims to halve emissions from its previous tour, which ran from 2016 to 2017.
Coldplay teamed up with DHL, the tour’s official logistics partner, to minimise emissions from freight and transportation.
The band also indicated using carbon offsets for “unavoidable emissions” and planting one tree for each ticket sold. “We pledge to draw down more CO2 than the tour produces, supporting projects based on reforestation, rewilding, conservation, soil regeneration, carbon capture and storage and renewable energy.”
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Among the more creative initiatives include installing “kinetic floors” in tour venues, which Coldplay says converts fans’ dancing into energy “and literally helps to power the show”. Concertgoers are also invited to cycle on “electricity-generating power bikes” that the band says will “actively charge our show batteries”.
Two years in, have these plans bore fruit? According to a June 3 update by Coldplay, direct emissions from the first two years of the tour were 59% lower than their previous tour “on a show-by-show comparison”. These figures were verified by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (MIT ESI).
In addition, Coldplay has planted seven million trees as of June 3 — one for each concertgoer. This was equivalent to approximately 10,000 ha of land restored across 24 countries and 48 planting projects.
Professor John E. Fernández of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology signed off on MIT ESI’s annual audit. “With each subsequent year of their tour, they demonstrate an evolving vision and expanded commitment to move the entire music industry toward true and humane sustainability and planetary resilience. From collecting unprecedented amounts of data to taking specific actions today based on rigorous analysis, Coldplay is modelling a trajectory toward a low-carbon, biodiverse and equitable future.”
On June 27, MIT ESI announced an advisory committee for the next phase of its Assessment Report of Live Music and Climate Change in the US and the UK. The report, which will be released in the coming months, aims to assess a link between live music and climate change and identify key areas of improvement for the industry and concertgoers.
Collaborating with nature
Audiophiles, too, can contribute to conservation efforts without buying a concert ticket. By streaming certain songs that feature sounds of nature, funds will reportedly be channelled towards threatened ecosystems worldwide.
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The Museum for the United Nations, also known as UN Live, launched the “Sounds Right” project in April. The project features a playlist of 15 remixes by artists including Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora, English singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding, influential English musician Brian Eno and the late English musician David Bowie.
One featured artist appears in all 15 tracks: Nature. Now credited as a recording artist, a share of streaming profits will be collected by the Eno-founded charity EarthPercent.
“Tracks crediting Nature support the conservation of the most precious and precarious ecosystems around the world,” reads an announcement on Bowie’s social media accounts.
Eno, who co-wrote Bowie’s track Get Real in the mid-1990s, added sounds of hyenas and wild pigs in the new release. “In the nature remix of Get Real, the animals are invading the song,” says Eno. “It’s like it has sprung leaks everywhere and these animals are coming in through every window and crack between the doors. They’re sort of threatening — suddenly, Nature has crept into the art.”
“Music started as the sounds of the natural world,” he adds, “and ‘Sounds Right’ creates a system to give back to nature, helping to preserve the planet so that it can continue to inspire us for years to come.”
Wasteful vinyl?
In today’s streaming era, Billboard counts 1,250 streams of any song from an album through a paid subscription service, such as Apple Music, as one album sale. Listeners using ad-supported streaming services, such as YouTube or Spotify Free, will have to make 3,750 plays to contribute to one album unit.
Physical releases are thus still important for popular musicians gunning for a best-selling album. However, some are changing their tone on traditional media, especially the much larger vinyl format.
In a March interview with Billboard, American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish criticised the “wasteful” practice of musicians who release multiple variants of the same record in a bid to drive sales and climb the charts.
In a way, her comments were also a criticism of the industry. “We’re all going to do it because [it’s] the only way to play the game,” says the 22-year-old.
The most adept at that game today is perhaps Taylor Swift, whose 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, has spent 10 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart after more than 30 versions of CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads have hit the market.
Keeping her pole position has been a tough fight. When Eilish’s new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, threatened to unseat Swift, the latter announced three limited-edition versions of her album that were only available on May 16 and 17 — Eilish’s release date.
Eilish’s third studio album eventually debuted — and peaked — at number two.
But the multiple re-releases are starting to hit a sour note with fans. Brendan Tan, an undergraduate who also sells records on the e-commerce platform Carousell, thinks the landscape is becoming “wasteful and overly saturated”.
The hunt for variants has made music “feel like a trading card game”, adds Tan, who goes by @groovedistortion on Carousell and Instagram. “The ‘collect them all’ mentality is very effective in pushing total album sales and propelling artists up the charts.”
But the nature of the vinyl industry and community is “inherently wasteful”, says Tan. “The carbon footprint of a record [includes] the packaging, the inserts, the record itself and the outer wrapping,” he adds. The full emissions profile also includes the transport of materials and shipping of records.
In turn, Tan says that artists like Eilish and Goulding have recently advocated for “eco-vinyl” releases. “Eco-vinyl is the re-use of leftover vinyl from the production of other records, resulting in an interesting marble of colour vinyl that can differ greatly.”
Goulding’s fifth studio album, Higher Than Heaven, is sold via an “ecomix colour vinyl” option. According to her label, Universal Music, the vinyl uses “100% recycled colour compound that would have otherwise been discarded”, and the sleeve is made with “recycled card and a renewable plant-based wrap”.
While welcome, such sustainability features are not the main draw for music fans; Higher Than Heaven peaked at #125 on the Billboard 200 chart.
‘Marketing tool’
Growing public awareness and concern about climate change has created a demand for more sustainable practices across all sectors, including the entertainment industry, says Samer Elhajjar, senior lecturer at NUS Business School’s marketing department.
Musicians are public figures with significant influence to shape public opinion and drive change, he adds, and younger, more environmentally-conscious audiences are creating a self-reinforcing loop for the industry. “Musicians, in general, [may] try to align themselves with sustainability so they can enhance their appeal and connect more deeply with fans.”
This could even be a competitive advantage for musicians’ revenues. Coldplay, for example, could attract sponsorship opportunities with brands committed to sustainability, says Elhajjar.
He notes that its decarbonisation plan had already attracted positive media coverage, and its fanbase appreciates these efforts. “It is a very interesting marketing tool.”
World tours may be an emissions-intensive activity for musicians, but for now, there is still “no better alternative”, says Professor Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at NUS. “There’s no substitute for live music, and, of course, the only way is [for the musicians] to fly.”
There are also emissions from thousands of fans flying to the venue. This was seen when Singapore struck a deal for Swift to play for six nights here — and nowhere else in Southeast Asia. “This is where we have to be careful; there’s the economics part of it as well. There must be a balance [between sustainability and] providing entertainment to boost the economy.”
Photos: Jovi Ho/The Edge Singapore, Brendan Tan, NUS Business School
