Billie Eilish is trying to make physical music more eco-friendly. The artist promised a more sustainable album rollout for her new release, Hit Me Hard and Soft. Now her website lists the sustainable practices that her team put in place for each version (there are eight for vinyl alone) hitting the market.
The standard black version is made from recycled black vinyl, while colored variants are made from either eco-mix vinyl, which is produced using leftover scraps of other vinyl, or biovinyl, which is made from materials including used cooking oil.
Despite music consumption going digital with the rise of downloads and streaming, physical music remains popular with fans, and not necessarily for the purpose of listening to it. More and more, it’s a memento. In fact, about half of U.S. buyers who purchase vinyl LPs don’t even own a record player, a report from music sales data company Luminate found. For musicians, putting out multiple versions of a record has the benefit of boosting sales and, thus, chart position when fans buy more than one version, something Eilish has taken issue with.
Eilish’s emphasis on sustainability for her third studio album comes after she told Billboard in March that she thought it was wasteful for musicians to release multiple editions of their albums “just to get you to keep buying more.” Though she didn’t mention any artist by name, some considered it a swipe at Taylor Swift, who released six vinyls of Midnights, five of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and ten of Folklore.
“It’s so wasteful, and it’s irritating to me that we’re still at a point where you care that much about your numbers and you care that much about making money,” Eilish said.
Despite calling out artists over their multiple-version releases, Eilish has jumped on the bandwagon. In addition to eight vinyl versions of Hit Me Hard and Soft, the album is also available as a CD and cassette. But the artist’s website explains the steps her team took to reduce waste.
The packaging for the vinyl records is made from recycled paper that’s printed with plant-based ink and water-based dispersion varnish. Her posters are made from recycled paper, and products are shipped in 100% recyclable shipping boxes.
“Recognizing sustainable design as an imperfect journey of efforts, Billie is using a range of solutions as she works with her team towards constant improvement,” her site says.
While more sustainably produced physical music can cut down on physical waste, streaming isn’t without its own environmental costs because of the energy it takes to store and transmit digital audio files, according to researchers from the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo.
In their study on the environmental cost of streaming, the researchers found that the greenhouse gas equivalent of plastic production it took to store and transmit digital audio files in the U.S. in 2016 reached between 200 million kilograms and more than 350 million kilograms. That’s more than the greenhouse gas equivalent of 157 million kilograms that it took to produce music in 2000, the study found.
For albums you plan to play over and over again, then, there comes a point when physical music is more environmentally sustainable than streaming. That is, if you don’t buy every variant of an album that a musician puts out in the name of boosting sales.
