Teams from The Listening Planet and VozTerra have spent decades recording sounds of the natural world, allowing new audiences to appreciate NATURE’s beauty, diversity and fragility. Recordings like this can be used to monitor the health of ecosystems, support the design of biodiversity conservation projects, and even improve the mood of listeners. Initial tracks by the artist NATURE will mainly feature NATURE recordings from initiative partners, but our ambition is to enable anyone with recordings of NATURE to upload them to a public database that artists can use to create new music and acoustic ecologists can access to monitor the health of the ecosystems we inhabit.

4.6 billion years ago a star was born. With timeless classics such as ocean waves, wind, rainstorms and birdsong, nature has inspired much of the music we listen to today. Now fans can listen to NATURE via her own artist profiles on all major streaming platforms, including both ambient nature sounds to relax to or be inspired by (check out the Ecosystem Sounds playlist) as well as ‘Feat. NATURE’ tracks where global artists bring sounds of the natural world into their music. While we allow artists and producers complete discretion to record and use the nature sounds they like, our partners at The Listening Planet and VozTerra have provided many of the nature sounds used in Feat. NATURE tracks (and are credited accordingly).

NATURE is an artistic construct - formed by Sounds Right partners - to recognise NATURE's contribution to music and ensure funds flow back to biodiversity conservation and restoration initiatives. The artist persona allows artists to use sounds of NATURE and donate part of their royalties to conservation initiatives, as managed by a diverse and representative Executive Advisory Panel. The Sounds Right initiative does not claim exclusive rights to nature’s creations, but instead provides an innovative and long-term mechanism for financing nature’s conservation. In the near future, NATURE will be an artist that anyone can collaborate with, seeding a new model for creative partnership with the natural world while generating royalties for biodiversity conservation and restoration projects.

NATURE’s royalties and donations are collected by EarthPercent, a registered charity in England and Wales (1188391) and a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation in the United States (EIN: 86-3830611). EarthPercent distributes these funds to rights-based NATURE conservation and restoration projects in the world’s most precious and precarious ecosystems under the guidance of the Sounds Right Expert Advisory Panel, a group of world-leading biologists, environmental activists, Indigenous People’s representatives, and experts in conservation funding. Grant-giving focuses on conservation initiatives with proven models of ecological impact and community-centered approaches. In 2024, the fund committed $225,000 to four conservation programs in the Tropical Andes, the world’s most diverse biodiversity hotspot. Namely, Reserva Natural La Planada, Fundación Proyecto Tití, FundaExpresion, and Jacana Jacana. In 2025, the Fund will direct NATURE’s income towards the Key Biodiversity Areas including those in the Amazon and the Congo Basin.

The greatest artist of all time has never been credited for her work. At least not at any great scale. Via the Sounds Right initiative, 90% of NATURE's music income and corporate donations go to biodiversity conservation, with the remaining 10% used to cover ongoing initiative costs, like artist outreach, music production, managing the conservation fund, and managing valuable partnerships. NATURE receives at least 50% of the post-distribution recording royalties, with the other share kept by artists and their rights holders. 100% of top-up donations from the public via NATURE's GoFundMe go to the Sounds Right Fund

Wondering how the Sounds Right initiative is funded? The majority of core costs are covered by third-party grants (see partners section at the end of the website), and the initiative is sustained long-term through 10% of corporate donations and music income.