Labels and music companies are making a pledge to become more sustainable and reduce greenhouse emissions with the Music Climate Pact. The initial fourteen signees to the pledge include majors Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, in addition to Anjunabeats, Beggars Group, BMG, Brownswood Recordings, Full Time Hobby, Inside Recordings, !K7 Music, Ninja Tune, Partisan Records, Secretly Group and Warp. Hundreds more companies are expected to join by June 2022.
The pact doesn’t kick in initially. By February 2022, founding signatories will be required to sign up to one of two schemes, the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) or the UN-backed Race to Zero SME Climate Commitment. Both commitments have the goal of halving GHG emissions by 2030 – and drop to net-zero by 2050.
They will supposedly be working with experts to create actionable climate targets and report on those regularly. It isn’t clear how often regularly means and a request for clarification was not answered.
The pact will also bring together the industry to establish carbon measurement methodologies, tools and frameworks backed by climate science. Another key thing to note this is that the recorded music business is just one small piece of the industry. This pact will allow the labels to put pressure on suppliers and digital streaming platforms to obtain data and drive emission reduction projects in a collaborative fashion.
Many of the companies included in the pact have already made their own independent commitments to decarbonization and sustainability. The majors have made pledges, while companies like Ninja Tune, Beggars Group & Secretly Group made their own commitments. Ninja Tune says it is committed to being carbon neutral by the end of 2021 and will be carbon negative beyond that, while Beggars Group says that it will count all carbon emissions along its supply chains and expect that the UK-managed operations are carbon negative by the end of 2022. The US managed operations will hit this goal by 2024. Secretly plans to zero out their negative climate impact on or before the 30th Anniversary in 2026.
