Methods, systems, and devices for data stream processing for media management are described. A set of transfer units of a plurality of transfer units associated with a cursor of a garbage collection procedure are selected. The selecting is based on a set of data streams corresponding to the cursor and each transfer unit of the set of transfer units is associated with a same data stream of the set of data streams. A plurality of write commands are issued in connection with the garbage collection procedure for the cursor. Each write command includes an instruction to write a transfer unit of the set of transfer units to a respective destination address of the memory sub-system.