12 ways the music industry leaned in to climate action in 2022

It’s that time of year again! All the sad, acoustic cover versions rejected for this year’s John Lewis are being released at once. Google searches for ‘who were the Waitresses?’ are having their annual spike. And Music Ally is continuing our series of 2022 recap posts on music industry trends.

Today, what we’re looking back on is the industry’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency by reducing its emissions, be they from touring, physical releases or the day-to-day business of running music companies.

The scale of the challenge is daunting, but there are a lot of efforts going on in our industry to take inspiration from. Here are some of the examples we wrote about in 2022. And remember, you can see our full series of recap posts here: industry data, acquisitions, K-Pop moments, TikTok talking points, web3 thoughts and more.

01 Impala’s music carbon calculator for independent labels

Along with US organisation Reverb, UK charity Julie’s Bicycle has been an important force for change around the creative industries’ sustainability.

One of its projects that came to fruition this year was a carbon calculator tool for independent labels, developed for European indie body Impala. It helps those companies to understand their climate impact, as a springboard for taking action to reduce it.

More than 70 had started by November, when Impala launched a #WeMeasure campaign to drive further uptake. It’s part of the body’s wider efforts, which this year included an initiative called IMPACTS to offer labels’ climate literacy training.

02 Julie’s Bicycle’s We Make Tomorrow conference

While we’re on the topic of Julie’s Bicycle, Music Ally took a lot of heart from the charity’s We Make Tomorrow conference in October, which brought together climate activists, artists and people from across the creative industries.

We reported on it at length, with talking points including the important role that culture of all kinds will play in tackling the climate emergency, and an enlightening debate on why ‘Net Zero’ isn’t the simple goal it sometimes seems.

Also worth your time: Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Climate Justice Hub, which launched in May with resources for artists of all kinds – musicians included.

03 Coldplay aimed high on their Music of the Spheres Tour

Some people love to hate Coldplay, and that’s been true since the band’s earliest days. It’s particularly true of the group’s climate activism: they’re a lightning rod for the ‘well you go on tour in private jets so pipe down’ school of critics. Yet in 2022, Coldplay continued their efforts to make those tours as sustainable as possible.

The Music of the Spheres tour came with a raft of sustainability initiatives, from renewable, super-low emission energy to power its stage production (complete with kinetic floors to convert fans’ dancing into energy) to using local equipment wheer possible; using recycled steel for the stage; compostable materials for the band’s now-trademark LED wristbands; low-energy LED screens and more.

One part of all this sparked more criticism: a partnership with Finnish company Neste to provide sustainable biofuels for the tour. Another part of its business, producing palm oil (and the deforestation involved) saw fingers pointed at Coldplay for working with the company. There were lessons to be learned, but alongside the likes of The 1975, the group have still contributed greatly to the net knowledge of the music industry about how large-scale tours can be greener.

04 Multiple efforts to make records more sustainable

The vinyl revival in recent years has been exciting, but it brings with it some questions about the sustainability of this format and its production processes. However, we were interested to see several companies working on technologies to tackle this challenge too in 2022.

In July, Evolution Music showed off its first bioplastic vinyl record, which it said produced far less toxic emissions than the standard PVC process. The tech was later tested out by a split-12″ record from Michael Stipe and Beatie Wolfe.

Another startup, ElasticStage, raised £3.5m of seed funding for its own non-PVC vinyl manufacturing technology, with ambitious plans to deploy it. Meanwhile, Naked Record Club launched as “the world’s first eco-friendly vinyl record club” via a partnership with 99% carbon-neutral pressing plant Deepgrooves.

05 Music Declares Emergency’s Climate Pack and fan study

Music Declares Emergency is another organisation that has been banging the drum for action for some time now. Like its fellow groups, it sees education and inspiration as key. In April it published a free Climate Pack designed to give artists and music companies tips on how to cut their emissions.

Research is also part of MDE’s brief. In May it put out a study by researchers at the University of Glasgow exploring music fans’ attitudes towards the climate emergency in the UK. It found that 82% of them were concerned about climate change; that 54% thought tackling it should be a top priority; but that 64% had not heard of any music industry initiatives on that front.

06 ABBA explored green shipping with Wallenius

When it comes to making tours greener, the logistics – shipping equipment and people from place to place – are key. There are companies out there working with artists and live companies to figure out the next steps.

One we’d not heard of before is Swedish shipping firm Wallenius, which struck a partnership with ABBA in May around the (then) soon-to-launch ABBA Voyage experience in London. The company would be the logistics provider and sustainability consultant, but we also got a glimpse at its Oceanbird wind-powered vessels, which could have a role to play in future green tours.

07 The UK got its first Green Events Code

In October, more than 500 festivals and outdoor events in the UK signed up for a new Green Events Code, published by industry steering group Vision2025. It set out “national minimum sustainability standards, targets and practices” for outdoor live music, with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.

Again, it was a good example of encouragement and inspiration for the industry: saying what needs to be done, and building a community of companies carrying it out, and sharing their success stories with one another.

08 Lukas Graham took green batteries on tour

When it comes to tackling emissions and finding our way to a more sustainable music industry, artists’ individual experiments and policies will have a key role to play in providing lessons to build on more widely.

We mentioned Coldplay earlier, but Danish star Lukas Graham is another example. He worked with renewable-technology company Vestas for six outdoor shows in his homeland this year, swapping generators for portable batteries charged up with energy from an offshore wind farm. A proof-of-concept partnership to explore whether this technology can replace diesel-powered generators.

09 The Lumineers went on their second climate-positive tour

The other thing about climate-protecting measures is that you can build on them yourself, taking the lessons from something you’ve done and doubling down next time round. American band The Lumineers were a good example of this, setting off on their second ‘climate positive’ tour working with US organisation Reverb.

From free water refill stations and reusable bottles through to stands for local nonprofit organisations at the concerts, backstage recycling, green cleaning products and calculating emissions, the tour aimed to cut the band’s own emissions while also giving fans encouragement.

10 A Greener Festival’s Cultura Circular Toolkit

A Greener Festival and Edinburgh Napier University worked together (with the British Council) on their ‘Cultura Circular Toolkit’ to help festivals to run greener operations. It was an initiative focused initially in Mexico, where 30 festivals took advantage of the training.

The lessons learned will now be used to expand the number of events who can take advantage, while also making the toolkit available online for other festival organisers to read and adapt to their own situations.

11 MQA’s efforts to reduce hi-res audio’s carbon footprint

We know MQA best for its work on hi-res audio technology, which is being used for downloads, streaming and live/broadcast. However, the company has a longstanding interest in the climate emergency too: we teamed up with it on a Music Ally TV Show episode in February 2021 to discuss the challenges for example.

This April, MQA talked about its efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of high-resolution audio files by as much as 80%. The company estimated that the annual carbon savings from someone streaming six hours a day of MQA-powered music on Tidal versus the HD formats on Apple or Amazon could be the equivalent to five return flights from London to Berlin, or planting 19 trees.

Streaming services haven’t tended to compete on climate metrics. Perhaps that could change: even if it’s not the major selling point, the likes of Apple, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube competing to make their services as sustainable as possible – nudged by the likes of MQA – would be a good thing.

12 Universal Music Group’s climate-focused Mental Health Roadmap

We’ve written about independent labels who have published and talked about their sustainability: Beggars Group and Ninja Tune, for example, and Secretly Group. By 2022, the climate emergency was also an important part of the major labels’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, setting out what they were doing to become more sustainable (in climate terms) business.

This year we also liked a partnership between Universal Music Group and The Mental Health Coalition that focused on the climate emergency’s impact on people’s wellbeing. The ‘Roadmap to Climate Change Mental Health addressed issues including eco-anxiety; eco-numbness; climate depression; climate trauma and PTSD (for example for people who have experienced a weather-related disaster) and climate grief.

While you’re here…

– Listen to our interview with Greg Cochrane, co-host of the climate and music-focused Sounds Like a Plan podcast. And if you work at a company that might be able to help fund future series, check out this story too.

– January’s NY:LON Connect conference we co-run with Music Biz has sold out of in-person tickets, but virtual tickets are still available. Check the lineup here!

– In October we launched a series of five courses to help labels, managers and artists make the most of Amazon Music. The free courses each last 30-45 minutes. Find them here!