Last year was a bad one for musicians, especially those whose livelihoods depend on concerts and tours. This year will be difficult, too.

Amidst the hardship, some have suggested that the Covid-19 cloud could have a silver lining. Of music’s industrial sectors, it is global concerts and touring practices – the businesses of musical performance – that use the most energy and generate the most pollution. At least the shift to livestreaming, they say, will be lighter in those terms. What’s more, the pandemic provides an opportunity to reflect on what live music means and what it might be. It offers a chance to learn lessons and, to borrow a catchphrase embodying optimism in the face of misfortune, to »build back better.«

Has this sable cloud turned forth such silver linings in the night, or are we deceived? Are these just cloud illusions?

It is probably both. But any optimism worth having, any hope worth holding, should stand the test of critical thought.

The idea that sitting in a living room, pressing play on a laptop, and streaming a live concert is a cultural form less resource-intensive than situations in which masses of fans, musicians, and equipment assemble themselves by various means and in various locations around the world – this is obviously true. A livestream is clearly less heavy-duty than a physical concert. Going digital is undoubtedly better than being physical, it seems, in terms of energy and pollution.

These are common ways of thinking about our current moment. The digital is opposed to the physical, and they are compared on one-to-one bases. But this is unhelpful, and wrong. The digital is physical. Digital livestreaming is a highly coordinated physical situation. It relies on infrastructures of electricity and telecommunications, facilities of data storage and processing, and devices of all kinds (not to mention what all those things are made of, who makes them, and where this stuff goes once it breaks down, is deemed obsolete, or becomes unwanted). Although livestreaming seems almost magical, it is worth remembering that such magic is an art of illusion. Like other kinds of concert formats, livestreaming costs energy and creates waste. And to compare a single »physical« concert to a single »digital« concert in these terms is to miss the point. What is needed is a basis to understand the relationship between larger cultural conventions and industrial systems surrounding musical performance. Every digital cloud has a carbon lining.

Laura U. Marks, a scholar of media art and philosophy who advocates small-file media, estimates that to stream thirty-five hours of high-definition video is to require nearly 400 kilowatt hours of electricity – which is to release over 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. That would be like thirty-five people livestreaming a one-hour concert. What if the audience grew to one, ten, or a hundred million? How would this compare to global tours where bands play 150 shows to sold-out stadiums? Or to the global festival scene, with thousands of events and hundreds of thousands of fans at each one?

It is difficult to know. But it is possible that shifting the cultures and industries of musical performance to the livestream may actually end up using more energy and generating more pollution than the cultural form that we are more accustomed to thinking of as a concert. This is counterintuitive. It seems ridiculous. But it is a possibility that is based in an observable phenomenon known as a rebound effect.

A rebound effect means that, although common sense would suggest that using a given resource or product more efficiently should make for less overall use of that resource or product, it is often the case that such efficiency gains are followed by cultural and industrial responses that actually lead to increases in the overall use of that resource or product.

Economist William Stanley Jevons described this phenomenon with regard to coal in the 19th century. Environmental sociologist Richard York and others have noticed the same issue in relation to highly efficient gasoline engines, car culture, and petroleum use in the 20th century. Interdisciplinarian Vaclav Smil writes about similar problems surrounding today’s digital devices. And I have discussed such issues in the history of the recording industry. For a very relatable illustration, consider email. Journalist AJ Dellinger spoke to Mike Berners-Lee, who once wrote a book called The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Berners-Lee estimates that a letter delivered as electronic mail uses under 2 percent of the energy it would take to deliver the same letter via snail mail. Yet the ease of email, the efficiency of its lightness and speed, means that people tend to send more of it. This increase in use can cancel out the one-to-one savings compared to an old-fashioned letter. It can lead to a rebound effect.

To take another example, consider George Kamiya – an analyst with the International Energy Agency, who is sceptical about the need to pay too much attention to the environmental costs of streaming media. Kamiya reminds us that the emissions from industry and transport are much more substantial in overall terms, and he estimates that the world’s internet infrastructure has met the increasing demands placed on it in the past decade, including a 40 percent spike in traffic during the first Covid-19 lockdown, without breaking a sweat. Yet even Kamiya is not sure that this situation can last, and admits to the possibility of a rebound effect stemming from a more data-intensive world. Even though musical performance has been the most substantial polluter and user of energy among music’s industries, things may only get worse with a shift toward livestreaming. If the goal is to learn lessons and build back better, it is worth knowing about the potential pitfalls of livestreaming.

Maybe this isn’t anything to worry about. After all, people seem eager to get back to musical performances in dedicated venues. And on 9 November 2020, half an hour after the announcement of an effective vaccine, the stocks of several live music corporations shot up over 20 percent. This was no surprise. As early as May, the deep wallets at Goldman Sachs had already forecasted that, even if live music revenues would drop by 75 percent in 2020, the business would snap back at some point and return to its pre-pandemic rate of growth by about 2023. Predictions that the global revenues of live music would increase from just under $20 billion in 2007 to just under $40 billion by 2030 were ultimately unaffected.

This suggests less the hope of building back better than the bounce-back of business as usual – a different type of rebound effect. Financial recoveries seem destined to be met by emissions increases. From this perspective, the virus will be an economic hiccup, not an ecological lesson.

Here, musicians and fans want answers. They want solutions – and some do exist.

Many festivals have moved away from plastic cups as well as toward organic food on edible plates. Some claim to power themselves using only renewable energy. Certain musicians have given up on flying, choosing instead to tour by bus or train. And perhaps, in the realm of livestreaming, fans and musicians will learn to love small-file and low-resolution concert experiences.

These all appear to be admirable potential solutions to the ecological consequences of musical performance. But I have come to see solutions, or solutionism, as part of the problem. It is in the nature of solutions that they accept terms that have been set for them by the way a problem has been imagined. In other words, to define a problem is to determine the scope of its possible solutions.

Often, the ways people want to solve environmental problems contain an unstated assumption – which is that they can go on consuming in the ways that they are accustomed to, as long as they purchase the right goods, use the right technology, or find the right form of energy. What is clear in the wider realm of environmental politics, though, is that the ecological crisis is a problem of consumer capitalism. Trying to address that crisis by fighting capitalist problems with capitalist solutions is very much like a fire-on-fire scenario.

Still, the above responses to music’s environmental impact may embody something of what the philosopher Kate Soper describes as a vision of cultural life that does not weld the idea of better to the expectation of more. She speaks of these ecologically sound futures in terms of alternative hedonisms and post-growth living.

And if concerts and festivals have long been defined by mythologies of hedonism, then perhaps they may be sites where the current planetary ecological problem will not so much be solved as reimagined and recomposed.

• CTM 2020: Decomposed — The Political Ecology of Music by Kyle Devine by CTM Festival

• CTM 2020: Decomposed — The Political Ecology of Music by Kyle Devine by CTM Festival