Kyle Devine is a professor of environmental studies with a particular interest in the music industry. He investigated the ecological impact of the music industry in a previous book, Decomposed. It didn’t cover the solutions, and that has become a follow-up. As the opening sentence spells out, “this book is about people in music who are reshaping what they do in light of the climate crisis.”
“My hope is that the story of how music connects to the climate crisis, while perhaps less consequential than heavy duty economic policy or hardcore climate science, will appeal to people in ways that those things don’t. Music is like that.”
Count me in, music being another big preoccupation of mine alongside sustainability. And off we go, into a section on new technical solutions in music, then a middle section on institutional solutions, and finally one on what music itself can offer to the climate crisis.
We begin with a company experimenting with different ways to make vinyl records. Then we get another company that regrinds old records to make new ones, then another trying to sell the idea of bioplastic records to audiophiles. The alarm bells begin to ring – is this actually a book about record production? I’m a third of the way in and it’s all been about records so far. Then the technical solutions section ends, with passing reference to other ways to listen to music.
This is an odd choice for a book published in 2026, when almost two thirds of all music listening is through streaming services. Once you account for radio and live performances, less than 10% of music listening is through physical formats of any kind. Vinyl is a sliver of that again, making the book about a very narrow aspect of the music industry.
The section on institutional solutions feels only slightly broader, looking at ClimateEQ’s carbon literacy programmes for people in music, and the IMPALA carbon calculator for the industry. Brian Eno’s EarthPercent features, which raises money for environmental charities through the music industry, and a group called FEAT that gets musicians to fund solar farms. I was surprised to find no mention of Reverb, which I would have considered the leading organisation pushing climate action forward in live music, certainly in America. Neither is there anything on festivals.
The final section feels limited in scope too. We read about Coldplay’s new approach to touring in some detail, including their app that gives fans discounts for using public transport. On music itself, and whether it has a role in the climate crisis, the book plunges into a discussion of cultural studies as a discipline, its origins and influence. As a cultural studies graduate myself, I’m all in favour of this, but I wondered where the case studies and examples had gone. The only artist that gets a look in is Bjork and her music video for Utopia, concluding that its vision of ecology “resembles a gated community” – a misreading of the text, in my opinion.
Devine’s central thesis is that the ‘recomposition’ of the music industry in response to the climate crisis doesn’t go far enough. Not because it needs better technologies or better songs, but because it’s a middle class phenomenon that doesn’t challenge underlying inequalities. Capitalism and consumerism, the drivers of the climate crisis, are untroubled by a greener music industry. “None of it goes where we truly need it to – not unless it passes through a class-based confrontation with capital.”
That’s fine as far as it goes, but it means the book doesn’t really value the projects it describes. Aside from vinyl records, it feels like the author doesn’t have any real enthusiasm for the subject. Recomposed is weighted down by its own scepticism and, for me at least, never quite finds its groove.
- Recomposed is available from Earthbound Books.
