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 a long history of contributing to music. Now fans can listen to NATURE via her own artist profiles on all major streaming platforms, including both ambient NATURE sounds and ‘Feat. NATURE tracks where global artists bring sounds of the natural world into their music. For launch this meant artists using their own NATURE recordings or collaborating with VozTerra and Biophonica (The Listening Planet’s platform for music production). NATURE is an artistic construct - formed by Sounds Right partners - to recognise NATURE's contribution to music and ensure funds flow back to conservation 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 creations, but instead provides an innovative mechanism to direct music royalties and donations to conservation. Looking ahead, we’re working to make NATURE 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 will be 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 will distribute 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. The Panel will consider projects with proven models of ecological and community impact, robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and delivered by organisations with the right capabilities. Projects in ecosystems with the highest levels of biodiversity and endemism will be prioritised, with initial analysis identifying Key Biodiversity Areas in the following regions: Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands; Indo-Burma, India, and Myanmar; Sundaland; Philippines; Tropical Andes; and, the Atlantic Forest.

The greatest musician of all time has never been credited for her work. At least not at any great scale. Via the Sounds Right initiative, at least 50% of recording royalties from tracks by global artists that feature NATURE will be donated to biodiversity conservation and restoration projects along with 63% of recording royalties from ambient NATURE tracks. These royalties are topped up by corporate donations and individual giving (via our GoFundMe page). See ‘Funding NATURE’s Conservation & Restoration’ for more details on how funds will be distributed.

Wondering how the Sounds Right initiative is funded? The majority of core costs are covered by third-party grants, with Hempel Foundation and Community Arts Network providing seed funding to get this initiative off the ground. To help sustain Sounds Right going forward, 10% of corporate donations and 7% of recording royalties from ambient NATURE tracks will be shared between EarthPercent and the Museum for the United Nations – UN Live, covering costs like engaging (human) artists, managing the conservation fund and running the initiative.