Music streaming can be a drag on the environment. These K-pop fans want to clean it up. [MIT Tech Review]

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On Valentine’s Day 2023, five K-pop fans came to a bustling street in the center of Seoul, one of them in a bee costume. Then they started dancing to “Candy” by the boy band NCT Dream and unfurled a banner with a message for Korea’s largest domestic music streaming platform: “Melon, let’s use 100% renewable energy and happily be together with Kpop for the next 100 years.”

A few weeks later, Melon, which has over 4 million active users in Korea, promised to do just that—pledging to adopt 100% renewable energy for its data centers by 2030.

It was the culmination of a campaign organized by Kpop4planet, a small group of volunteers that is achieving surprising success in mobilizing K-pop fans to act against the energy-intensive practices of the music industry. In recent years it has led a series of actions for climate causes, secured pledges to reduce the carbon footprint of music streaming, and pressured international brands to turn their supply chains away from fossil fuels.

K-pop fans have for years been known for their incredible organizing power. As their numbers have grown around the world, they have become influential political forces, shaping elections and advocating for social change. It was these actions that inspired two young fans, Dayeon Lee from South Korea and Nurul Sarifah from Indonesia, to found Kpop4planet in 2021. Particularly concerned about environmental issues, they began to think about how some aspects of K-pop culture can exacerbate environmental degradation. For example, excessive music streaming can generate carbon emissions at every step, from the data centers that process requests to the devices that play the music. 

“I [initially] thought the physical-album-waste issue was much more important,” says Lee, who is a 21-year-old university undergraduate, currently living in Japan. “But I was really surprised when I did some background research … [and] realized that the streaming issue is much more serious because it is a long-term issue.” 

While producing and selling physical recordings does, of course, have a carbon footprint, most of the environmental issues end after the initial purchase. That’s not the case with digital distribution. Streaming an album more than 27 times, according to 2019 research at Keele University in the UK, will likely end up using more energy than it takes to produce a CD. This kind of listening happens frequently in K-pop culture, which often encourages fans to host “streaming parties” where they play the same song on repeat. 

Buoyed by the success of its streaming campaign, Kpop4planet has recently targeted companies outside the music industry that have benefited from working with K-pop idols; it’s asked them to make similar pledges on renewable energy or other climate goals in order to secure continuous support from the fans. The group has put pressure on Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest e-commerce company, to set up a decarbonization plan. And it’s gone after Hyundai—which uses the K-pop band BTS as brand ambassadors—over a business deal to source aluminum from a company relying on a new coal power plant. This led to another big victory: In March 2024, Hyundai agreed to seek alternative suppliers for its aluminum.

These wins may be surprising for a group with just 10 full-time members. Hyundai and Melon did not immediately respond to requests for comment, so it’s hard to know exactly why they changed course. But for her part, Lee believes the group’s success comes from how it is able to represent the genuine feelings of a massive fan base and draw companies’ attention to those demands. In total, Kpop4planet’s online petitions have collected signatures from nearly 60,000 fans in 223 countries. And the group doesn’t stop until it gets what it wants. 

“We have to be the messenger between corporations and K-pop fans,” Lee says. “We also want to expand our campaigns to more global corporations, because we believe that K-pop fans have enough power and influence to make our society more sustainable.”

The carbon footprint of “streaming parties”

Even as streaming has become the dominant way to listen to music, its energy consumption—in faraway data centers or via invisible telecommunication transmissions—remains hard for the end user to recognize.

“I think streaming is especially nefarious because those negative impacts are happening so far away and in such an invisible way,” says Joe Steinhardt, an assistant professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia who studies the music industry and is the author of the book Why to Resist Streaming Music & How. He calls streaming music “a disposable listen” because of the way an app keeps pulling data from the cloud and not storing it locally. 

Still, it’s hard to draw a definitive conclusion on whether streaming damages the environment more than buying physical copies; its actual carbon footprint depends on many factors. For example, streaming a music or lyrics video on a TV consumes significantly more electricity than using an energy-efficient device like a smartphone. But then smartphones present their own problems; they are very energy intensive to manufacture, and people often abandon them after a short time. 

While the overall climate impact of streaming is still being studied, many of the problems it presents are undoubtedly exacerbated by the K-pop industry. The number of times a song is streamed is factored into music ranking charts, televised competitions, and awards. Artists with the highest streaming numbers are seen as more successful and consequently get more resources and exposure from the recording companies, incentivizing fans to keep streaming. 

KPOP4PLANET

As a result, many K-pop fans stream significantly more than listeners of other genres. In the streaming parties, fans play newly released songs for long periods of time in order to show their support, boost traffic numbers, and hopefully attract more fans to the songs. In 2022, Kpop4planet surveyed 1,097 fans (more than 75% of whom were in Korea) and found that the majority of them spent more than five hours per day in streaming parties. That is almost double the amount of time an average music consumer would spend listening to streamed songs, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). In extreme cases, streaming parties may push people to play the same song on multiple devices at once—sometimes muting them, so the music is not even being heard.

“Fandom at this level, whether it’s K-pop or any fandom, is an inherently wasteful concept. It’s based on how much can I waste to show that I love you,” says Steinhardt. In any musical genre, fans are used to expressing their love through excessive purchases because it’s a financial transfer to the artists. Streaming introduced new and less expensive ways to achieve the same goal, but they are nevertheless wasteful. 

The practical solution, he says, is probably not to ask fans to stop being so devoted. “I recognize there’s a real value in that,” says Steinhardt. “So the question is, is there a way to do that that doesn’t involve overconsumption?” 

Accountability for the streaming platforms

Instead of trying to change the individual actions of fans, Lee believes, it’s more important to hold big companies responsible for their behavior. “We believe that the environmental problems that the K-pop fans are suffering from are caused by the corporations,” she says. “They have the main keys to solving the climate crisis, as they are emitting lots of carbon emissions in the supply chain.”

So when Kpop4planet started its music-streaming campaign in 2022, it set its eyes on one particular solution: demanding that streaming companies switch to renewable energy.

A large portion of streaming-related emissions depends on the specific resources that power the data center a streaming company uses. “The actual streaming process is using electrical energy, so like electric cars, it comes down to how we are producing that electric power,” says Simon George, a lecturer in sustainability and green technology at Keele University. A server based in a region dependent on fossil fuels, for instance, will generate more carbon emissions than one powered by renewable energy. 

And South Korea has very little renewable energy. In 2022, fossil fuels generated 63.6% of the electricity there, compared with 52.5% for the average OECD country. Renewables account for less than 10%. Because of that, Korean domestic streaming platforms are consuming more fossil fuels to power their data centers than their counterparts in other countries. “The more we can push to decarbonize the grid, then the better we can feel about streaming music,” George says.

Not many K-pop fans appear aware of this. Lee, too, was in the dark until she formed Kpop4planet and started doing her own research. In August 2022, she made a comic explaining why streaming can be an environmental concern and posted it on Twitter, where it was retweeted more than 18,000 times. “Everyone was so shocked. So that was the point that our streaming campaign went viral,” Lee says.

After initially calling upon all streaming platforms to act, Kpop4planet homed in on Melon. In a fan survey that year, nearly half the respondents said they used Melon to host streaming parties and that they also expected Melon to take the lead on climate actions. Plus, 71.2% of the fans said they would move to a different streaming platform if it adopted more climate-friendly practices.

“We want to make Korean streaming platforms more sustainable so that the K-pop fans do not feel guilty by listening to our favorite idol songs,” Lee says.

Lee and her crew set a clear if ambitious goal: Get Melon to commit to using 100% renewable energy for its data centers by 2030 instead of 2040, which was the original pledge by its parent company, the Korean tech giant Kakao. Over the next year, Kpop4planet collected the names and contact information of thousands of fans, and got their backing for a public letter it sent to Melon outlining its demands. Kpop4planet also worked to establish connections with Melon employees and repeatedly invited company representatives to attend the group’s offline events aimed at raising awareness about the impact of streaming.

Finally, Kpop4planet invited Melon to attend the Valentine’s Day dance; the company declined because of scheduling conflicts but agreed to meet for a private discussion. That’s when it made the promise to “move all the data to the cloud that does not emit any carbon emissions by 2030,” Lee says. Melon didn’t respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment.

K-pop idols are not tools for greenwashing

Kpop4planet’s actions are part of a broader evolution in K-pop fandom, which has “slowly moved from sending gifts to idols to donating or volunteering in the names of their idols,” says CedarBough Saeji, an assistant professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at South Korea’s Pusan National University. 

In recent years, these volunteering activities have become much more political and direct—like organizing, she says, “to fund the escape from Gaza for individual Palestinian K-pop fans and their families and boycotting certain K-pop products or groups because of concerns around Israel-Palestine issues.” Kpop4planet, she notes, has also spoken directly to South Korea’s National Assembly about “how to make the K-pop businesses more environmentally friendly.” 

This advocacy is no longer focused just on streaming companies. Kpop4planet has organized nine campaigns in total, including several involving Korean and international brands that have been tapping into the large K-pop fanbase to promote their products. 

Its targeting of Hyundai was a particularly high-profile example. The Korean automaker has been working with BTS as brand ambassadors since 2018, and the group has more recently represented Hyundai’s electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. So when Kpop4planet learned in 2023 about a deal between Hyundai and an Indonesian aluminum supplier, the advocates decided to call out what they saw as hypocrisy. The metal supplier has plans to build a new coal power plant for aluminum smelting and wasn’t planning on using renewable power until late 2029 at best. If carried through, this deal would have increased the carbon emissions associated with Hyundai and delayed the automaker’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. (Hyundai did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.)

So Kpop4planet worked closely with BTS fandoms in Indonesia to highlight the local impact of a coal power plant like this one. Initially, fans worried that campaigning against Hyundai would give BTS a bad rep, but Lee and her group explained that the campaign was about protecting BTS from being associated with potential greenwashing activities. Kpop4planet collected  signatures from 11,000 K-pop fans in 68 countries and delivered an open letter to Hyundai’s office in Jakarta. It also invited indigenous fans in the country to show up for offline campaigns—dancing to BTS songs, sharing how they would be personally affected, and expressing their demands directly.

The message broke through. Hyundai agreed to meet with Kpop4planet in Seoul twice over the last year. “I was a little bit nervous before meeting them, because these are very big corporations,” Lee says. “But they are just like us, and they used to love K-pop culture when they were young as well.” In their conversations, Lee says, Hyundai told Kpop4planet that “they care about the K-pop fans because the influence of the K-pop industry is getting bigger and bigger around the world.”

In March, Hyundai announced it would terminate the deal and seek alternative sources of aluminum.

Also this year, the group has collaborated with five international Blackpink fan groups to campaign against four major luxury brands that the band’s members represent. Lee says they’re now talking to Kering (the owner of Gucci and Saint Laurent) and Chanel about reducing emissions and using 100% renewable energy across their supply chains. Lee says that in a Zoom meeting with Kering, the company echoed Hyundai in saying it cared about K-pop fans as its customers, and called Kpop4planet’s strategy of leveraging the influence of K-pop idols both modern and creative.

Indeed, not many climate activist groups probably approach their demands the way Kpop4planet does—with lots of joyous dancing. “I watched some videos on TikTok and YouTube of lots of Thai K-pop fans doing some K-pop dance covers to protest for democracy,” Lee says. “It was really impressive, because it is one of the most creative and also peaceful ways to deliver their opinions. So we want to show and highlight that kind of fun element of K-pop fandoms.” 

At the heart of all the campaigns, after all, is the love for K-pop music: “We [take] climate actions because we want to love and support our K-pop idols for a longer time.”