Playing to the Tune of Green

Was catching up on Buzz Out Loud episodes from the past couple of days in the car just now when Molly Wood made an interesting comment that wasn't part of the actual story.

Commenting on the Crave blog's story on HDTracks, a new music service that allows downloads of full-CD quality, uncompressed digital music files, Molly said something about "this is green too."

Being the (savvy?) PR practitioner that I am, my ears pricked. How does green music sound as a catchphrase to you? Would you buy more digital music online if I told you you were helping save the earth?

You know, on a second thought, it's probably quite an obvious connection. But why hasn't this angle ever been picked up by the good folks of already established online music stores (which I'm sure you'll have no problems naming)?

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever read an article covering green music and how much greener digital music tracks are compared to pressing CDs. I'm sure there's still an effect on the environment (heat release and energy consumption from keeping servers switched on 24/7 etc.) but compared to running factories pressing CDs, I'm sure the numbers will show some savings.

What would the impact be if the whole world went digital? And not just for music, but for videos, games and other digitally distributed content as well? How much greener would we be? (Sounds like a theme for next year's Earth Day?)

So, yeah, a thought-provoking topic to think about and I'm actually hoping that someone picks this up and goes run a study.

In the meantime, go home and ask yourselves - is my music green?

A Nokia phone that's nothing new

I'm so proud of Nokia (disclosure: one of my clients) today... this is the stuff I used to dream about as a kid - to take something from all the trash in my house and actually make something of it.


This phone's called the 'Remade', simply because it's made out of 100% recyclable or renewable materials. I spent a good while looking at the pictures to try and figure out where the recycled parts came from. You could almost see the aluminum that's similar to what you find in canned drinks, and I've read that the plastics come off recycled plastic bottles. Really interesting.

Anyway, read Jan Chipchase's blog post to get a better picture on the social idea behind Remade. He's got some interesting pictures of a gentlemen "remaking" the phone.