Afrigather On Valentine’s Day 2023, 5 Okay-pop followers got here to a bustling road within the middle of Seoul, considered one of them in a bee costume. Then they began dancing to “Sweet” by the boy band NCT Dream and unfurled a banner with a message for Korea’s largest home music streaming platform: “Melon, let’s use 100% renewable vitality and fortunately be along with Kpop for the following 100 years.”
KPOP4PLANET
A number of weeks later, Melon, which has over 4 million energetic customers in Korea, promised to just do that—pledging to undertake 100% renewable vitality for its knowledge facilities by 2030.
It was the fruits of a marketing campaign organized by Kpop4planet, a small group of volunteers that’s attaining shocking success in mobilizing Okay-pop followers to behave towards the energy-intensive practices of the music trade. Lately it has led a sequence of actions for local weather causes, secured pledges to scale back the carbon footprint of music streaming, and pressured worldwide manufacturers to show their provide chains away from fossil fuels.
Okay-pop followers have for years been recognized for his or her unbelievable organizing energy. As their numbers have grown all over the world, they’ve grow to be influential political forces, shaping elections and advocating for social change. It was these actions that impressed two younger followers, Dayeon Lee from South Korea and Nurul Sarifah from Indonesia, to discovered Kpop4planet in 2021. Significantly involved about environmental points, they started to consider how some points of Okay-pop tradition can exacerbate environmental degradation. For instance, extreme music streaming can generate carbon emissions at each step, from the information facilities that course of requests to the units that play the music.
“I [initially] thought the physical-album-waste problem was rather more essential,” says Lee, who’s a 21-year-old college undergraduate, at the moment dwelling in Japan. “However I used to be actually shocked once I did some background analysis … [and] realized that the streaming problem is rather more critical as a result of it’s a long-term problem.”
Whereas producing and promoting bodily recordings does, after all, have a carbon footprint, a lot of the environmental points finish after the preliminary buy. That’s not the case with digital distribution. Streaming an album greater than 27 instances, in line with 2019 analysis at Keele College within the UK, will probably find yourself utilizing extra vitality than it takes to supply a CD. This sort of listening occurs often in Okay-pop tradition, which frequently encourages followers to host “streaming events” the place they play the identical music on repeat.
Buoyed by the success of its streaming marketing campaign, Kpop4planet has just lately focused corporations exterior the music trade which have benefited from working with Okay-pop idols; it’s requested them to make related pledges on renewable vitality or different local weather targets as a way to safe steady help from the followers. The group has put strain on Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest e-commerce firm, to arrange a decarbonization plan. And it’s gone after Hyundai—which makes use of the Okay-pop band BTS as model ambassadors—over a enterprise deal to supply aluminum from an organization counting on a brand new coal energy plant. This led to a different large victory: In March 2024, Hyundai agreed to hunt different suppliers for its aluminum.
These wins could also be shocking for a gaggle with simply 10 full-time members. Hyundai and Melon didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark, so it’s exhausting to know precisely why they modified course. However for her half, Lee believes the group’s success comes from the way it is ready to characterize the real emotions of a large fan base and draw corporations’ consideration to these calls for. In complete, Kpop4planet’s on-line petitions have collected signatures from almost 60,000 followers in 223 international locations. And the group doesn’t cease till it will get what it needs.
“We’ve to be the messenger between companies and Okay-pop followers,” Lee says. “We additionally wish to develop our campaigns to extra international companies, as a result of we consider that Okay-pop followers have sufficient energy and affect to make our society extra sustainable.”
The carbon footprint of “streaming events”
At the same time as streaming has grow to be the dominant solution to hearken to music, its vitality consumption—in faraway knowledge facilities or by way of invisible telecommunication transmissions—stays exhausting for the tip consumer to acknowledge.
“I feel streaming is very nefarious as a result of these unfavourable impacts are occurring so distant and in such an invisible approach,” says Joe Steinhardt, an assistant professor at Drexel College in Philadelphia who research the music trade and is the writer of the ebook Why to Resist Streaming Music & How. He calls streaming music “a disposable pay attention” due to the best way an app retains pulling knowledge from the cloud and never storing it domestically.
Nonetheless, it’s exhausting to attract a definitive conclusion on whether or not streaming damages the atmosphere greater than shopping for bodily copies; its precise carbon footprint relies on many elements. For instance, streaming a music or lyrics video on a TV consumes considerably extra electrical energy than utilizing an energy-efficient system like a smartphone. However then smartphones current their very own issues; they’re very vitality intensive to fabricate, and other people usually abandon them after a short while.
Whereas the general local weather influence of streaming remains to be being studied, most of the issues it presents are undoubtedly exacerbated by the Okay-pop trade. The variety of instances a music is streamed is factored into music rating charts, televised competitions, and awards. Artists with the very best streaming numbers are seen as extra profitable and consequently get extra sources and publicity from the recording corporations, incentivizing followers to maintain streaming.
KPOP4PLANET
Because of this, many Okay-pop followers stream considerably greater than listeners of different genres. Within the streaming events, followers play newly launched songs for lengthy durations of time as a way to present their help, increase visitors numbers, and hopefully appeal to extra followers to the songs. In 2022, Kpop4planet surveyed 1,097 followers (greater than 75% of whom had been in Korea) and located that almost all of them spent greater than 5 hours per day in streaming events. That’s nearly double the period of time a mean music client would spend listening to streamed songs, in line with the Worldwide Federation of the Phonographic Trade (IFPI). In excessive circumstances, streaming events might push individuals to play the identical music on a number of units directly—typically muting them, so the music is just not even being heard.
“Fandom at this degree, whether or not it is Okay-pop or any fandom, is an inherently wasteful idea. It’s based mostly on how a lot can I waste to indicate that I really like you,” says Steinhardt. In any musical style, followers are used to expressing their love by extreme purchases as a result of it’s a monetary switch to the artists. Streaming launched new and cheaper methods to attain the identical aim, however they’re nonetheless wasteful.
The sensible resolution, he says, might be to not ask followers to cease being so devoted. “I acknowledge there’s an actual worth in that,” says Steinhardt. “So the query is, is there a approach to try this that doesn’t contain overconsumption?”
Accountability for the streaming platforms
As a substitute of making an attempt to vary the person actions of followers, Lee believes, it’s extra essential to carry large corporations accountable for their habits. “We consider that the environmental issues that the Okay-pop followers are affected by are brought on by the companies,” she says. “They’ve the principle keys to fixing the local weather disaster, as they’re emitting plenty of carbon emissions within the provide chain.”
So when Kpop4planet began its music-streaming marketing campaign in 2022, it set its eyes on one specific resolution: demanding that streaming corporations swap to renewable vitality.
A big portion of streaming-related emissions relies on the particular sources that energy the information middle a streaming firm makes use of. “The precise streaming course of is utilizing electrical vitality, so like electrical vehicles, it comes right down to how we’re producing that electrical energy,” says Simon George, a lecturer in sustainability and inexperienced expertise at Keele College. A server based mostly in a area depending on fossil fuels, for example, will generate extra carbon emissions than one powered by renewable vitality.
And South Korea has little or no renewable vitality. In 2022, fossil fuels generated 63.6% of the electrical energy there, in contrast with 52.5% for the common OECD nation. Renewables account for lower than 10%. Due to that, Korean home streaming platforms are consuming extra fossil fuels to energy their knowledge facilities than their counterparts in different international locations. “The extra we are able to push to decarbonize the grid, then the higher we are able to really feel about streaming music,” George says.
Not many Okay-pop followers seem conscious of this. Lee, too, was in the dead of night till she fashioned Kpop4planet and began doing her personal analysis. In August 2022, she made a comic book explaining why streaming might be an environmental concern and posted it on Twitter, the place it was retweeted greater than 18,000 instances. “Everybody was so shocked. In order that was the purpose that our streaming marketing campaign went viral,” Lee says.
After initially calling upon all streaming platforms to behave, Kpop4planet homed in on Melon. In a fan survey that 12 months, almost half the respondents stated they used Melon to host streaming events and that additionally they anticipated Melon to take the lead on local weather actions. Plus, 71.2% of the followers stated they might transfer to a special streaming platform if it adopted extra climate-friendly practices.
“We wish to make Korean streaming platforms extra sustainable in order that the Okay-pop followers don’t really feel responsible by listening to our favourite idol songs,” Lee says.
Lee and her crew set a transparent if formidable aim: Get Melon to decide to utilizing 100% renewable vitality for its knowledge facilities by 2030 as an alternative of 2040, which was the unique pledge by its mum or dad firm, the Korean tech large Kakao. Over the following 12 months, Kpop4planet collected the names and get in touch with data of 1000’s of followers, and acquired their backing for a public letter it despatched to Melon outlining its calls for. Kpop4planet additionally labored to determine connections with Melon workers and repeatedly invited firm representatives to attend the group’s offline occasions geared toward elevating consciousness in regards to the influence of streaming.
Lastly, Kpop4planet invited Melon to attend the Valentine’s Day dance; the corporate declined due to scheduling conflicts however agreed to satisfy for a non-public dialogue. That’s when it made the promise to “transfer all the information to the cloud that doesn’t emit any carbon emissions by 2030,” Lee says. Melon didn’t reply to MIT Know-how Evaluation’s request for remark.
Okay-pop idols should not instruments for greenwashing
Kpop4planet’s actions are a part of a broader evolution in Okay-pop fandom, which has “slowly moved from sending presents to idols to donating or volunteering within the names of their idols,” says CedarBough Saeji, an assistant professor of Korean and East Asian Research at South Korea’s Pusan Nationwide College.
Lately, these volunteering actions have grow to be rather more political and direct—like organizing, she says, “to fund the escape from Gaza for particular person Palestinian Okay-pop followers and their households and boycotting sure Okay-pop merchandise or teams due to issues round Israel-Palestine points.” Kpop4planet, she notes, has additionally spoken on to South Korea’s Nationwide Meeting about “find out how to make the Okay-pop companies extra environmentally pleasant.”
This advocacy is now not targeted simply on streaming corporations. Kpop4planet has organized 9 campaigns in complete, together with a number of involving Korean and worldwide manufacturers which have been tapping into the massive Okay-pop fanbase to advertise their merchandise.
Its concentrating on of Hyundai was a very high-profile instance. The Korean automaker has been working with BTS as model ambassadors since 2018, and the group has extra just lately represented Hyundai’s electrical and hydrogen-powered automobiles. So when Kpop4planet discovered in 2023 a couple of deal between Hyundai and an Indonesian aluminum provider, the advocates determined to name out what they noticed as hypocrisy. The metallic provider has plans to construct a brand new coal energy plant for aluminum smelting and wasn’t planning on utilizing renewable energy till late 2029 at greatest. If carried by, this deal would have elevated the carbon emissions related to Hyundai and delayed the automaker’s aim of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. (Hyundai didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from MIT Know-how Evaluation.)
So Kpop4planet labored intently with BTS fandoms in Indonesia to spotlight the native influence of a coal energy plant like this one. Initially, followers apprehensive that campaigning towards Hyundai would give BTS a foul rep, however Lee and her group defined that the marketing campaign was about defending BTS from being related to potential greenwashing actions. Kpop4planet collected signatures from 11,000 Okay-pop followers in 68 international locations and delivered an open letter to Hyundai’s workplace in Jakarta. It additionally invited indigenous followers within the nation to indicate up for offline campaigns—dancing to BTS songs, sharing how they might be personally affected, and expressing their calls for immediately.
The message broke by. Hyundai agreed to satisfy with Kpop4planet in Seoul twice over the past 12 months. “I used to be a bit bit nervous earlier than assembly them, as a result of these are very large companies,” Lee says. “However they’re identical to us, they usually used to like Okay-pop tradition once they had been younger as nicely.” Of their conversations, Lee says, Hyundai informed Kpop4planet that “they care in regards to the Okay-pop followers as a result of the affect of the Okay-pop trade is getting larger and greater all over the world.”
In March, Hyundai introduced it could terminate the deal and search different sources of aluminum.
Additionally this 12 months, the group has collaborated with 5 worldwide Blackpink fan teams to marketing campaign towards 4 main luxurious manufacturers that the band’s members characterize. Lee says they’re now speaking to Kering (the proprietor of Gucci and Saint Laurent) and Chanel about decreasing emissions and utilizing 100% renewable vitality throughout their provide chains. Lee says that in a Zoom assembly with Kering, the corporate echoed Hyundai in saying it cared about Okay-pop followers as its prospects, and known as Kpop4planet’s technique of leveraging the affect of Okay-pop idols each trendy and inventive. (Kering and Chanel didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from MIT Know-how Evaluation.)
Certainly, not many local weather activist teams in all probability strategy their calls for the best way Kpop4planet does—with plenty of joyous dancing. “I watched some movies on TikTok and YouTube of plenty of Thai Okay-pop followers doing a little Okay-pop dance covers to protest for democracy,” Lee says. “It was actually spectacular, as a result of it is without doubt one of the most artistic and in addition peaceable methods to ship their opinions. So we wish to present and spotlight that type of enjoyable component of Okay-pop fandoms.”
On the coronary heart of all of the campaigns, in any case, is the love for Okay-pop music: “We [take] local weather actions as a result of we wish to love and help our Okay-pop idols for an extended time.”
