From Audio to Energy: the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Quantified

The Energy Footprint of Release Week: How Much Power Your Favorite Album Uses

Guest post by Payless Power

When a big album drops, fans stream it over and over, often without thinking about the electricity that powers all that listening. But the energy used to stream billions of songs in just a few days really adds up. We looked at the debut weeks of the 20 most-streamed albums to find out just how much power it takes, and the results might surprise you.

From Taylor Swift’s record-breaking releases to how high-quality audio can use even more electricity, this breakdown shows how our music habits impact the grid.

Key Takeaways

• The 20 most-streamed albums in a single Spotify week generated 10.62 billion streams and used an estimated ~29.1 million kWh of electricity—roughly equal to the daily electricity use of ~1.0 million U.S. homes.
• Combined, streaming these albums during their record-setting weeks was associated with an estimated ~11.2 million kg of CO₂, using a U.S. average grid emissions factor.
• Taylor Swift accounts for three of the five highest-energy album releases, with each of her top single-week records using an estimated ~2.0–3.5 million kWh of electricity.
• Each of the 20 albums could power at least ~29,000 U.S. homes for one day, while the largest release, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, could power ~119,400 homes for one day.
• Across all albums, single-week electricity demand equaled approximately 84.2 million EV miles, 291.2 million kettle boils, and 58,235 hours of arena lighting.

Overall Streams, Electricity Use, and CO2 Emissions

• The top 20 most-streamed albums in a single Spotify week were streamed 10,615,821,756 times during that week.
• These streams used a total of 29,117,430 kWh of electricity and produced 11,239,328 kg of CO2.

The Taylor Swift Effect

• The most-streamed album release in the dataset, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), consumed an estimated ~3.46 million kWh in a single week—enough electricity to power approximately ~119,400 U.S. homes for a day.
• Three of the top five highest-energy single-week albums were by Taylor Swift, and each of her top single-week records used roughly ~2.0–3.5 million kWh of electricity during their record-setting weeks.
• TTPD alone produced approximately ~1.34 million kg of CO2, equivalent to driving an EV about ~10.0 million miles or powering arena lighting for over ~6,900 hours (about 0.8 years, roughly 9–10 months) nonstop.

Everyday Energy Use Comparisons

Here’s how the energy used during the debut week of the top 20 albums compares to common energy activities.

Audio Quality: Big Differences in Energy

Streaming music at higher audio quality uses more electricity, even if you’re listening to the same album:

• High-quality audio uses about 1.5× more energy than standard settings. For example, The Tortured Poets Department increases from using about 3.46 million kWh in a single week to roughly 5.19 million kWh when streamed at high quality.
• Lossless audio uses about 3× more energy than standard audio. That means TTPD jumps from 3.46 million kWh to approximately 10.39 million kWh, which is enough electricity to power about 358,000 U.S. homes for a day.

Video Streaming: The Most Dramatic Shift

Watching music videos instead of listening to audio streams can drastically increase electricity use:

• Streaming in 480p video uses about 5× more energy than standard audio. If fans watched The Tortured Poets Department in 480p video, it would use around 17.31 million kWh, roughly equivalent to 50.0 million EV miles.
• Streaming in 1080p HD video uses about 10× more energy than standard audio. In this case, The Tortured Poets Department would use about 34.63 million kWh, enough electricity to power approximately 69,250 hours of arena lighting, about 7.9 years of nonstop arena lights.

Device and Network Effects

Even without changing audio quality, where and how fans listen matters. The type of device and internet connection you use can also change how much energy is used while streaming.

• Smart speakers are generally low-power compared with laptops for audio playback, though differences vary by device model and volume.
• Larger, screen-based devices (laptops/TVs) can use substantially more electricity than phones or smart speakers, especially when the screen is on or video is involved.
• Streaming over mobile networks (4G/5G) is typically more energy-intensive per unit of data than streaming over fixed broadband/Wi-Fi, though the gap varies by conditions and network design.
• 5G can be more energy-efficient per bit than 4G in some conditions, but real-world efficiency varies with coverage, signal strength, and network load.

These differences may seem small for one person, but when millions of fans are streaming, they add up quickly.

Superfans and Looping: The Hidden Multiplier

When fans put an album on repeat, it can greatly increase energy use:

• If just 10% of listeners looped an album overnight during a record-setting streaming week, total electricity use could rise by 30% to 40%.
• For The Tortured Poets Department, that would mean going from about 3.46 million kWh to roughly 4.50–4.85 million kWh in a single week.

Our Methodology

This analysis estimates the electricity usage and carbon emissions footprint associated with the debut-week streaming performance of major album releases. First-week album stream counts were sourced from Spotify’s publicly reported streaming records. Energy use and emissions were calculated using the assumptions outlined below.

Energy per Stream: Spotify’s first-week stream totals represent plays of individual tracks, not full-album playthroughs. To estimate the energy used per stream, we calculated a unique average track length for each album:

• Average track length = album runtime (minutes) ÷ number of tracks
  • Album runtime and track count were taken from the same edition of each release (e.g., standard vs. deluxe/anthology) to ensure the calculated average track length reflects the version listeners streamed.
• Hours per stream = average track length ÷ 60
• Energy intensity: 0.045 kWh per listener-hour of audio. This is a benchmark estimate intended to represent electricity attributable to streaming across data centers, networks, and an average listening device, not a direct measurement of Spotify’s infrastructure. Because estimates vary by system boundary and device/network conditions, results are best interpreted as approximate; using 0.03–0.06 kWh/hour would yield totals ~⅔ to ~1⅓ of this baseline.
• Energy per stream = (album runtime ÷ number of tracks ÷ 60) × 0.045 kWh; each album therefore has a unique kWh-per-stream value
• CO2 factor: 0.386 kg per kWh (U.S. EPA eGRID U.S. average; applied uniformly for comparability)

Electricity and Emissions Calculation

For each album, we estimated electricity use and carbon emissions in two steps:

Step 1: Convert streams into electricity use

Each album has a unique energy-per-stream value based on its average track length. We multiplied this value by the album’s total number of streams during a single Spotify week to estimate total electricity consumption:

• First-week electricity use (kWh)
• = single-week streams × album-specific energy per stream

Step 2: Convert electricity use into carbon emissions

We then translated electricity consumption into carbon emissions using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s average grid emissions factor:

• CO2 emissions (kg) = kWh × 0.386 kg CO2 per kWh (U.S. EPA eGRID average)

Listener Behavior Scenarios: To show how fan habits can affect energy use, we modeled different scenarios. These multipliers demonstrate how much more energy video and higher-quality formats consume compared to standard audio streaming:

• High-quality audio: uses 1.5 times more energy than standard audio
• Lossless audio: uses 3 times more energy
• 480p video: uses 5 times more energy
• 1080p HD video: uses 10 times more energy

Real-World Equivalents: To make the results more understandable in everyday terms, kWh values were converted using the following equivalencies. All equivalents are based on first-week electricity consumption:

• Airplane miles: 0.5 kWh per passenger-mile
• Arena lighting (energy required to light a typical sports or concert arena): 500 kWh per hour
• EV miles: 0.346 kWh per mile
• Household electricity: 29 kWh per day
• iPhone charges: 0.012 kWh each
• Lightbulb hours: 0.06 kWh per hour (60W bulb)
• Water kettle boils: 0.10 kWh per boil

Limitations: Streaming energy varies across regions, devices, networks, caching behavior, and listening patterns. Scenario multipliers are illustrative and represent relative scale rather than precise predictions. Album-level track lengths are used to estimate average per-stream duration, as individual track-by-track stream data are not publicly available. These estimates represent electricity attributable to streaming time under the assumptions above, not a direct measurement of Spotify’s operational electricity use.