CDs vs iTunes

Music technology has been spinning ahead for years. Just as people became attached to one way of listening, a new and improved method would push the previous one out of stores. We’ve come a long way, but now CDs seem poised to exit the way of the eight-track. CD sales are steadily declining while online MP3 sales rise to match like opposing ends of a scale. Though audiophiles have spent long hours discussing and debating the merits of music playing methods, most concerns tend to focus strictly on sound quality. Today, however, Americans are looking at every facet of life for the eco-friendly alternative and this should be no different. Are music downloads waving in an era of greener grooving? Or are we too quickly writing off those little silver discs? In this Face-Off we challenge an iTunes tune against its hard-copy counterpart and listen for the sweet sound of sustainability.

Sometimes the greener choice is simple. Other times, it might not work for you.

CDs

iTunes

Do the math

A newly released CD at Wal-Mart (the second largest music retailer in the U.S. after iTunes) = $9.97. On sale, as most new releases and popular albums are, from $18.98. With 13 songs on the album, the per song price works out to be about $0.77.

The same newly released CD at iTunes = $10.99, which works out to about $0.85 per song—or, if you want to purchase songs individually, $0.99 per song.

Pros

Believe it or not there are some powerful perks to purchasing an old-fashioned CD. For one thing, some people just like to have something solid to show for their money. Also, many music-fans will argue the case of better sound quality on audio CDs over MP3s and they’ve got a point… although the average listener probably won’t notice much of a difference. Then there’s the convenience of a CD. Instead of downloading an album and then uploading it to your iPod or MP3 player, you unwrap, open and insert. And, of course, there’s that $0.08 savings per song.

On the environmental end, one great way to get green is to combine resources with the people around you (in a word—share) and it’s easier to loan a CD than a selection from an iTunes library.

Music downloads are pretty great really; they’re convenient and sometimes cheaper and, boy, do they save a lot of space (although it’s easier to impress a guest with a vast CD collection than it is with an extensive iTunes library). Sound quality is improving all the time and iTunes is finally starting to get a little more accommodating by introducing a digital rights management (DRM)-free iTunes in spring of 2009 and a new price range of $0.69 to $1.29. Not to mention the ability to buy just the one-hit from a one-hit wonder.

Green-wise the tracks from iTunes aren’t half bad either. No plastics, gold or dyes required here. And when you want to get rid of an album (again, Vanilla Ice anyone?) all you have to do is press delete.

Cons

You probably have an idea what’s coming here; CDs, being a physical item, consume resources throughout their creation and distribution and they often make an un-friendly eco-impact when the music stops. The degree to which CDs tap the earth’s resources may surprise you; petroleum-derived plastics, chemical-heavy dyes and even gold (an under-the-radar pollutant with pretty hefty consequences) are all common. And that’s just to get started—there are the plastic CD cases and plastic wrap to get things ready for sale, not to mention the carbon footprint that comes from both the CD manufacturers and transporting the CDs to their final destination. Not much to sing about there.

After all that, CDs can have a relatively short life-span if they’re not cared for properly or if the listener loses interest (Vanilla Ice album, anyone?) and few people remember to recycle their CDs after use.

Still, almost nothing is without its own impact, however small that may be. Like we mentioned above, it’s harder to share your music with iTunes (at least legally) and in some cases, like with the two albums we compared, the songs may cost you a little more. You don’t have to worry about longevity with your digital music library the way you do with CDs, but he who fails to back-up his hard drive may find himself facing the music—or lack thereof.

Don’t forget about the server the keeps iTunes alive, either. An environmental organization from the U.K. recently completed a report that compared servers to SUVs in terms of being environmental enemies. There’s little information on the impact of the iTunes server, but we haven’t heard anything from Apple that indicates they are at work on an energy-efficient server.

The Big Picture

Arguing that buying CDs is the greener choice for music-seekers is even harder than trying to get a new CD out of the shockingly tricky plastic wrap it comes inside. The fact is that since CDs use up valuable resources and create waste, they can’t be a great green option. However, there’s one element that people tend to overlook—buying used CDs. Not only does this provide you with the sound quality of CDs, it saves you money and it keeps existing CDs from ending up in landfills. Making use of what we already have instead of acquiring more of anything (or everything) is really the best way to go easy on the Earth, and if you’re buying your CDs used, we say rock on.

Downloadable music from sites like iTunes may well be the way to make our music more earth-friendly, and the benefits you receive out of it are probably worth it on their own (you know, the space, savings and convenience). It’s the kind of merging of goals—good for the planet, good for you—that we at Greenzer love to see. Now if major online music providers would just get to work on energy efficient servers and carbon neutral facilities, we’d really be singing their praises—which would then be available to download for the low fee of $0.99.