Dematerialisation and the Audiobook

Originally published in Bound Vol. 3

This shift away from plastic products is indeed a beneficial move for the environment, but it is not that straightforward.

Audiobooks are the fastest growing product (Kozlowski 2020) in the publishing industry—and have been for many years. While they appear to be becoming purely digital, the environmental impact of digital streaming services is growing. New technologies have made audiobooks more accessible than ever (Have & Stougaard Pedersen 2016), allowing perpetual access via download and streaming services. While the digitisation of audiobooks and other sound media may appear to exemplify dematerialisation, this is only true on the consumer end. Where once an audiobook recording was purchased in hard copy from a retailer, now it is bought from an online store or acquired via a digital subscription service. The hard copy of the audiobook recording is fading into antiquity and in its place is the computer, or the smartphone. This shift away from plastic products is indeed a beneficial move for the environment, but it is not that straightforward. Data centres and network infrastructure, often referred to as the cloud, occupy an abstract space in our media consumption—and a physical space far beyond our perception.

As with all new and rapidly developing technologies, the impacts they have on people’s lives are not immediately apparent. As audiobooks continue to grow, we would be remiss to ignore the implications of the technologies that host them and bring them into our lives. Researchers have begun to explore these complex implications, but the topic is intricate and leaves much room for debate.

Audiobooks as Audio Industry

Audiobooks were once a crutch intended to supplement print publications and address issues of access for the visually impaired and dyslexic (Have & Stougaard Pedersen 2016). They were seen as complimentary and secondary to the written word. The sharp rise in popularity of audiobooks comes as the result of a societal shift away from this mode of thinking, towards an acceptance of audiobooks as a primary medium.

As this medium expands in the digitised marketplace, it must not only be considered as relating to the publishing industry, but also the audio and music industries with which it shares common factors. This is due to a shared marketspace, and shared delivery technologies.

Audiobooks are primarily consumed in digital forms; either streamed or downloaded. The trend is towards streaming, with devices such as smart televisions and smart speakers increasingly used for audiobook consumption (Kozlowski 2020). While audiobooks are relatively new on the digital market, music has been present there for many years. Music also occupies a much larger share of the digital audio space and provides an efficient case study for the potential environmental impacts of the growing digital audiobook market.

Kyle Devine, associate professor in musicology at the University of Oslo, states that digitised media appears inherently more environmentally friendly than hardcopy sales of the same product (2019). He writes that when weighed against the resources required to produce a CD or a record, as well as physically transporting that product to the consumer, the cost of producing and delivering digital audio feels like it would be less. In fact, he argues, the cost has never been greater.

Even the aspects of digital music streaming that seem most immaterial—including digital files themselves as well as the electromagnetic waves that travel to personal listening devices from local wireless routers, cell phone towers, or satellite dishes—are in fact only invisible (Devine, 2019, p. 131).

When the evolution of audio delivery services is taken into consideration, it is evident that their plastic usage in theUnited States market peaked in the early 2000s during the golden age of the CD at 61 million kilograms (University of Glasgow 2019). As CDs lost favour and digital technologies came to the fore, plastic usage by the industry sharply declined. As of 2016 the industry’s plastic consumption was at its lowest point since the early 1900s; a humble 8 million kilograms. While this may seem to imply that digital audio technologies actually decrease the environmental impact of recorded audio, the impacts have simply been relocated. Devine measured the plastics and electricity used for storing and transmitting digital audio data and translated this into its greenhouse gas equivalents (GHG) in order to compare them to physical recordings. He estimated that in the US market between 2000 and 2016—the same timeframe that saw the dramatic drop in plastics use—GHG emissions rose from 157 million kilograms per year to anywhere between 200 and 350 million kilograms per year.

The misconception is that digital media is dematerialised, paperless and virtual. However, digital media is as physical as ever. It exists in data centres and cloud storage facilities all over the world. Not only are these physical constructs built out of real-world materials, they continuously draw power and require ever-increasing quantities. They are linked to distribution and data transfer networks; infrastructure such as terminals, processors and cooling systems, to keep them working optimally. The overall draw on energy grids by these facilities was 3% of the total power used globally in 2016 (Devine 2019). Some experts believe that the rate of growth in these areas will continue, becoming unsustainable.

Massive as data centre energy use may already be, this is nothing to what lies in store … Ian Bitterlin, Britain’s foremost data centre expert and a visiting professor at the University of Leeds, says the amount of energy used by data centres is doubling every four years—despite the innovations in hardware that massively increase their capacity to store data. As a result, analysts forecast that data centres will consume roughly treble the amount of electricity in the next decade (Bawden 2016).

The implications of this possibility will not be limited to the information and communication technologies industry but will also affect those who predominantly operate online. As audiobooks build on the foothold they have in the digital space, they too will be subject to the ramifications of such change.

Why Stream Audiobooks?

Streaming is the latest evolution of convenient media. It allows us to discover and access sound and video in the same instance. No longer do we have to wait minutes for songs or an album to download, or hours for a movie. Streaming allows us to consume that content at the same time as receiving it, without having to worry about storage at all.

This is making a large difference to the audiobook market. Nowadays, listeners to audiobooks can do so anywhere, at any time. This does not simply refer to smartphone, tablet or laptop users. Listeners are increasingly utilising smart speakers and connected televisions to stream their audiobooks. These devices are not intended to store data for playback like they used to be and are often voice controlled, meaning that there is no physical interface like traditional media players. This means that a larger audio file like an audiobook can be accessed more easily now than ever before.

Convenience isn’t the only factor at play. Many providers would also prefer you to stream, despite the inherently higher resource demand than downloading. When you stream, your provider knows you’re doing it. They know what you listen to, what you are likely to listen to and when you are listening. Streaming provides them with the ability to get more out of you and know more about you. Among the predominant digital providers of audiobooks are Amazon, Google and Apple—large tech and digital retail companies with a history of pushing the boundaries of privacy.

The Shift Project Problem: Ongoing Debate

In 2019, French thinktank, the Shift Project, released a report investigating the relationship between digital and energy transition. They were concerned that digital technologies—namely streaming services—were growing at a rate faster than energy efficiency could control, and hampering national and global climate change goals outlaid by the Paris Agreement (“Lean ICT”: Towards Digital Sobriety, Shift Project, 2019). The report is highly critical of Western internet usage habits, stating that ‘the overconsumption is not a global phenomenon: it is caused by high income countries, for which the major challenge is to take back control of their digital uses’ (Shift Project, p. 4, 2019a).

The report also makes a similar claim to Devine (2019), in that ‘the real trend of digital is in opposition to its presupposed function of dematerializing the economy’ (p. 4, 2019). Within the report they outline a plan for a cultural shift in the way we think about using online services, with the ambitious and somewhat unrealistic view to plateau the industry’s energy consumption in 2020 (p. 5, p. 36 ̶ 58, 2019a).

Shortly after, the Shift Project released another report specifically targeting online video streaming (“Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video”, Shift Report, 2019). This report received wider media coverage, and is largely responsible for awareness of the streaming energy issue outside of technical circles. This did, however, attracted criticism as inflammatory language used to gain attention has created a narrative that is at odds with other reports from the same field. The findings point to the issues as larger and more pressing than other studies report, especially those who claim that improved data storage and energy efficiencies will level out the problem.

George Kamiya (2020) issued a direct response to the Shift Project’s reports, downplaying the ‘misleading media coverage’. His commentary was initially published by Carbonbrief, and then again by the International Energy Agency(IEA). Kamiya’s focus was on correcting miscalculations and assumptions made by the Shift Project.

Drawing on our analysis and other credible sources, we expose the flawed assumptions in one widely reported estimate of the emissions from watching 30 minutes of Netflix. These exaggerate the actual climate impact by up [to] 90 times (Kamiya, 2020).

Kamiya claims that the incorrect figures come from the second report issued by the Shift Project (2019), but the Shift Project issued their own response to Kamiya’s criticism, in which they claim:

An analysis published in March correctly pointed out an error by The Shift Project regarding the climate footprint of online video. This error appeared during an interview. It has no impact on the results published in our reports, which are not contested (Shift Project, Did the Shift Project Really Overestimate the Carbon Footprint of Online Video? Our Analysis of the IEA and Carbonbrief Articles, 2020).

This exchange was largely concerned with how to conduct research in this field, and represents an ongoing, unresolved debate within the industry. There are many different interpretations that can be drawn from the data—as evidenced by this case—meaning that there is no clear, agreed upon prediction for the future of streaming media. The only thing that is certain is that there is growth to happen yet, and that sooner or later the industry providing these services will be forced to change—one way or another.

What can be done?

The environmental implications of audio streaming are intrinsically tied to the technologies used to deliver them. When the research on this field is considered, there is no mistaking the trend towards higher energy usage, and higher greenhouse gas emissions. What is largely debated is the action required to address this increase.

One main argument is that increases in energy and data storage efficiency are and will continue to be offsetting the increase in demand (Kamiya, 2020). Just as it is plainly visible to see the increase in demand for these services, so too can the increase in efficiency be observed. This solution may in fact be subject to the Jevons Paradox. The paradox states that by seeking to reduce the use of a resource by making its use more efficient, the resource becomes more appealing to use and thus demand instead goes up. Just as was true when Jevons applied this theory to coal power, it may indeed defeat the purpose of improving efficiency.

This leads into the argument on the other side of the data streaming emissions argument. Groups like the Shift Project (2019) believe that this issue will quickly become out of control, and will lead us further away from our climate action goals.

There is a real risk of a scenario in which increasingly massive investments in digital technologies would contribute to a net increase of digitalized sectors’ carbon footprint – which has in practice been the case for more than a decade (Shift Report, “Lean ICT”: Towards Digital Sobriety, 2019a)

Instead of relying on technological efficiency improvements, the Shift Project suggests what they call ‘Digital Sobriety’, a term that encapsulates their call for a cultural shift in thinking towards digital technologies. The first step in their plan is to raise awareness of this issue, as evidenced by their leap into the headlines in 2019. What they suggest is similar to methods of conserving water during water restrictions. They argue that by being conscious of the impacts of our data usage, both personally and professionally, we will instinctively make more resourceful choices (The Shift Project 2019a).

Downloading audiobooks uses significantly less energy, therefore producing less GHG than streaming services. Having digital content stored locally, especially content that is visited frequently, negates much of the impact of streaming. The environmental cost is largely in the transfer of data, and the upkeep of data centres. To remove them from the equation makes sure that usage of digital audio content is having the least possible affect.

Conclusion

The digitisation of audiobooks has given the market a significant boost, and overcome one of the biggest obstacles the medium has faced: accessibility. Without downloading or streaming services, this aspect of the digital publishing industry would never have been able to experience the rise in popularity that has been seen in recent years. Audiobooks are predicted to continue their growth, and are increasingly moving onto streaming service providers.

The new technologies remove a degree of physicality from the product, making them seem weightless, formless, and virtual. However, the reality is that they still occupy space in the world and that the environmental cost of providing them is much higher than is apparent. Storage and transfer of digital audio files via streaming services draws an increasingly large amount of energy globally, with the trend only set to worsen.

Researchers are exploring the implications of these issues, though there are few mutually accepted courses of action. Researchers are debating the complex variables involved in making predictions in this area, as there is no agreed upon framework for investigation. The true impact of media streaming services is complicated by factors such as existing infrastructure, energy and data storage efficiency, projected industry growth, manufacturing of network devices and end-user systems, and the energy requirements of powering them.

How this will affect the growing audiobook industry is unclear at this stage. What is clear is that changes in the way the digital marketspace operates are inevitable, and as a fledgling industry the future for audiobooks is in the balance.

Reference list

Bawden, T 2016, Global warming: Data centres to consume three times as much energy in next decade, experts warn, Independent, viewed 18 May 2021, <https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/global-warming-data-centres-to-consume-three-times-as-much-energy-in-next-decade-experts-warn-a6830086.html>.

Bitterlin, I 2018, Worrying times ahead? Data Centre Dynamics Ltd, viewed 19 May 2021,

<https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/worrying-times-ahead/>.

Devine, K 2019, Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Have, I & Stougaard Pedersen, B 2016, Digital Audiobooks: New Media, Users, and Experiences, Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

Kamiya, G 2020, The carbon footprint of streaming video: fact-checking the headlines, International Energy Agency, viewed 21 May 2020, <https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-fact-checking-the-headlines>.

Kamiya, G 2020, Factcheck: What is the Carbon Footprint of Streaming Video on Netflix?, Carbonbrief, viewed 21 May 2020, <https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-on-netflix>.

Kozlowski, M 2020, Audiobook Trends and Statistics for 2020, Good E Reader, viewed 21 May 2021, <https://goodereader.com/blog/audiobooks/audiobook-trends-and-statistics-for-2020#:~:text=Last%20year%20audiobook%20sales%20increased,increase%20of%2025%25%20from%202017.&text=57%25%20of%20frequent%20audiobook%20listeners,up%20from%2051%25%20in%202019>.

Shift Project March 6 2019, “Lean ICT: Towards Digital Sobriety”: Our New Report on the Environmental Impact of ICT, report, Shift Project, viewed 21 May 2020, <https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report/>.

Shift Project July 11 2019, “Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video”: Our New Report on the Environmental Impact of ICT, report, Shift Project, viewed 21 May 2020, <https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/>.

Shift Project 15 June 2020, Did The Shift Project Really Overestimate the Carbon Footprint of Online Video? Our Analysis of the IEA and Carbonbrief Articles, report, Shift Project, viewed 21 May 2020, <https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/shift-project-really-overestimate-carbon-footprint-video-analysis/>.

University of Glasgow 2019,Music Consumption has Unintended Economic and Environmental Costs, University of Glasgow, viewed 20 May 2020, <https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2019/april/headline_643297_en.html>.

10 November 2021