This style of music has the worst ecological balance

Despite global digital networks, Even in the 21st century, live music enjoys uninterrupted popularity. There are also concert tours that allow fans to directly experience their favorite artists and their music.

But touring requires international travel, including gas-guzzling tour buses and planes. Now there is the question: Which musicians perform their tour with a (relatively) small ecological footprint, and which are climate sinners? This has emerged from a study by the Texan electricity supplier Payless Power the most popular artists from six different music genres analyzed based on their life cycle analysis.

They have become Billboard chart data (U.S. chart chart) used to determine the most popular musicians in six different genres of music. Subsequently, the tour dates of these artists in 2022 were analyzed to estimate their CO2 emissions and thus determine which artists are at the top of the eco charts.

The calculation was based on tour dates from the year 2022. Interesting: although tours by classic rock bands have an average of 5% more performances, they were significantly less harmful to the environment.

International DJs are the biggest polluters: seven of the ten most polluting tours were organized by EDM DJs. This, even though they are often on the road with less staff and equipment than live music. Even “less” polluting DJs like David Guetta caused more pollution than nearly half of artists in any other genre. Tiesto caused almost 4000 tons of CO2 through its flight emissions alone and therefore caused the greatest damage. The artist with the second most flight emissions was rapper Jack Harlow.

Of the 90 acts surveyed, Ed Sheeran’s tour caused the least emissions. That’s mainly because he wasn’t touring Europe until 2022, so only needed a few (and only short) flights. Rap star Megan Thee Stallion’s tour, on the other hand, went all over the world. It is doubtful that Ed Sheeran will be able to show such a good ecological balance again if he aims to travel the world again.

According to the research, it was mainly classical rock musicians who could undertake tours with (relatively) low CO2 emissions. These performers used the least fuel for flights and travel and covered the shortest distances, despite having the second highest number of appearances on average. Conversely, EDM tours consumed exponentially more fuel, despite an average similar number of shows per tour.

Within each genre, the largest and smallest carbon footprint awards went to: