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Studies have been conducted that reveal just how much better foe the environment it is to purchase music online than to buy CDs. One particular study was commissioned by Microsoft and Intel and compiled by Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University and discovered that, by buying MP3 downloads instead of CDs, web users could reduce the carbon footprint of an average CD album by 40 to 80 per cent.

Even the lower end of this estimate is significant. By cutting carbon emissions by 40 per cent across the whole CD industry, huge changes would emerge. The music industry is a huge one, and cutting around half of the carbon emissions being created from each CD could mean that a large step is made towards helping stop climate change.

The study was based on the carbon emissions created when a customer buys a CD online and has it delivered. It also took into account how some CDs get delivered via airmail, and these made up the carbon savings figures that totalled higher in the scale, at around 80 per cent.

For a CD to be manufactured, packaged and delivered, the environment suffers to a significant degree - particularly when you consider how many millions of CDs are being produced around the globe. However, simple music downloads can severely cut down on these emissions, meaning that digital downloads can help protect the environment just that little bit more.

The results did concede that roughly the same volume of carbon emissions are created when a customer walks to a shop as opposed to buying the CD online, but it can mainly be assumed that the reason the customer is purchasing the CD online is because they do not have the time or want to walk to the shop. Large file transfers, similarly, brought down the eco-friendliness of the digital download, but this was the case for particularly sizable files and not average albums.

As the debate between CD purchases and digital downloads rages on, information like the study reveals could prove crucial to helping many people make their decisions. And as digital music like MP3 downloads has many more extra advantages, including being usually a lot cheaper than CDs - thanks again to the lack of packaging and processing that goes into CD manufacture - and the benefit of being instantaneous, where the user can download a sing within seconds and an album within minutes, it would appear that the future is growing more and more towards digital than physically bought music.

Adam Singleton writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.