Sounds Right

Our world has failed to properly value nature.
Sounds Right set out to shift that mindset by positioning NATURE as an official artist, paid for her instrumental contribution to music and our lives through royalties generated from music streams.

Launched on April 18, 2024, across Spotify and more platforms, listeners can fund ecosystem restoration simply by enjoying music featuring nature sounds and crediting NATURE.

Overcoming the creative and technological challenges of verifying a non-human artist on music streaming platforms, we designed a sustainable royalty flow and engaged artists from around the world to collaborate with NATURE—an initiative primarily built on partnerships and a shared belief in a bold idea, with budgets dependent on funding and donations.

With over 150M streams, 14M+ listeners, features from major artists, and $225K already committed in 2024 to Indigenous and community-led conservation projects in the Colombian Tropical Andes — with a projected total of $500K+ by the end of 2025 — Sounds Right has proven a scalable model for reimagining how we value, hear, and support the natural world.

Imagine contributing to change without changing anything.

Sounds Right's purpose is to empower millions of people to support real-world nature conservation. All they have to do is keep doing what they already love doing - listening to music.
Additionally, the initiative reimagines how society values nature by making NATURE an artist, finally being paid her work and her instrumental contribution to our lives.

In short, the ambitious goal is to build a business model for systemic change by:
1. Drive systemic, long-term behaviour change to protect nature.
2. Develop an entirely new financial mechanism for conservation and biodiversity protection, seamlessly embedded into existing consumer behaviour.

The initiative is grounded in the cultural insight that the target audience cares about the climate but often feels powerless to act. Research shows that people want meaningful, everyday ways to make a difference: make a change, without making a change to their everyday life.
The core audience for Sounds Right know the issues in the world, but they don’t know what to do about them. They are what psychology calls the “conscious incompetent”.

We saw an opportunity to meet them where they already are: streaming music. By transforming nature into a credited artist, we created a new model where listening becomes an act of impact. This approach reframed conservation as culture, not charity.
The work combines behavioural science (nature connection increases climate-friendly behavior), music industry mechanisms (royalty payments), and creativity (feat. NATURE tracks) to shift how we value ecosystems, inviting music fans into climate action through joy, not guilt.

Our implementation strategy was simple but powerful: introduce NATURE to the world with the same scale, creativity, and visibility as any top-tier artist.

2024 April: NATURE launched as an official artist with 15 Feat. NATURE tracks & 65 pure NATURE tracks; event at the United Nations HQ in New York. We partnered with world-renowned artists who gave NATURE space to shine in their work, amplifying her presence within mainstream music culture. And through our partnership with Spotify, NATURE appeared on high-profile placements such as billboards in New York, London, Bogotá, Miami and Jakarta, via social media and in-app promotions, meeting audiences where they already discover music, resulting in 460+ media features and NATURE rising to top 1% artist on Spotify.

2024 June/July: NATURE 'performed' at Glastonbury and Roskilde festivals, alongside Cosmo Sheldrake & AURORA respectively.

2024 September: More Feat. NATURE tracks released alongside a panel and event at New York Climate Week.

2024 October: Sounds Right Fund launched alongside Biodiversity COP16 in Cali, with $225k funding committed to Indigenous and community-led conservation projects in the Tropical Andes; Sounds Right concert for 3,000 members of the Cali public.

2025 April (Earth Day): 36 new Feat. NATURE tracks released, supported by a global Spotify marketing campaign and PR. Making it a total of 163 releases from NATURE; 61 Feat. NATURE collabs and 102 ecosystem tracks.

With a goal of creating long-term sustainable impact, we quickly discarded the standard marketing and communications playbook. Instead, we approached the project as a business in its own right and chose to follow the process for developing and assessing the feasibility of a business idea. Through research and collaboration with scientists, artists and environmental groups we explored and validated the initial idea of using the sounds of nature to create music. Early assessment of the music market showed a great opportunity: Global music revenue was USD 21.6Bn in 2021 with streaming counting for 62.1%, and projected to triple in size 2020-2026 (IFPI issues Global Music Report 2021, KBV Research).

The breakthrough moment was recognizing that by simply listening to music that features sounds of the natural world, fans could fund nature conservation and restoration projects. Based on that the core idea emerged: position nature as an artist deserving recognition and compensation, and build a new business model for good.

LONG-TERM VALUE: We established NATURE as the first verified, non-human, income-generating artist on the worlds’ biggest streaming platforms (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer)

FUNDING: $225k was committed in 2024 to Indigenous and community-led conservation projects in the Colombian Tropical Andes, protecting 3,200 hectares and restoring 900 hectares of forest. Funding will extend to the Amazon and Congo Basins, with a projected total of $500,000+ by the end of 2025.

ENGAGEMENT: 150M+ streams from 14M+ listeners in 182 countries on Spotify alone, each stream on channels royalties to conservation efforts, reached Spotify’s Top 1% artists worldwide

SCALE: Over 60+ artist collaborated. The initiative has been present at major climate summits, including New York Climate Week, Biodiversity COP16 and Climate COP29, and a major campaign planned around COP30 in Belém

AWARENESS: 3.7B media impressions, Billboard’s Top 5 music sustainability stories, 8x spike in global Wikipedia searches for “nature”