[LINK] Live streaming kills the planet, your cd collection doesn´t (as much)

[tomk]

On 14/09/2012 1:57 p.m., Fernando Cassia wrote:
> *It makes sense, if you think of it... producing and shipping a CD is a
> one-time carbon footprint effort, while keeping datacenters humming 24/7
> and the network infrastructure so that you listed to a bit stream every
> time you hit PLAY has a much larger energy consumption...
>
> http://grist.org/list/your-cd-collection-is-greener-than-spotify/
>
>
Interesting Argument.
But we have to allow for CD-Player power consumption at a steady 35 
Watts, Amplifier driving the speakers (another 15W) and the light switch 
turned on to be able to read the tiny writing on the CD case which of 
course is using valuable real estate floor space for storage (all of 
which requires heating/cooling BTU cycles).

& for the old fart component, there is always the cost of driving to the 
optometrist to buy the little glass cleaning polishing cloths that adds 
the invisible uncalculated overhead....

I would say it's a close call with possibly streaming winning by a slim 
margin of 1.5-1.7 watts per minute per 3 minute song play.

Where the streaming wins is the end device is usually battery powered 
with earphones plugged in.
Therefore the saving is in the earphones and not the network or hardware 
delivery options.

TomK