A Global Music Movement for Biodiversity

13 million listeners

have streamed tracks from NATURE in just six months on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, showcasing the potential to turn music into a powerful force for biodiversity conservation.

Global

Biodiversity

PartnersUN Live

Why

Global biodiversity conservation requires orders of magnitude more funding than is currently available. Creative new approaches and sources of funding need to be found to support biodiversity conservation at scale.

If economic models can demonstrate ways for nature to be valued and generate sustainable income, vast new sources of biodiversity funding could be unlocked. Industries with global reach, such as music streaming, offer untapped potential to contribute by directing a portion of their revenues into conservation—creating a financial model where economic success also supports nature.

Meanwhile, the most species-rich regions, home to the majority of the world’s biodiversity, receive only a fraction of global conservation funding. Many are in low- and middle-income countries, where financial resources for biodiversity protection are scarce despite their critical ecological role. This funding gap leaves vital ecosystems vulnerable to deforestation, habitat destruction, and climate change.

Redirecting financial flows to these biodiversity hotspots is essential for their long-term survival and the health of the planet’s natural systems. The Sounds Right initiative was launched as a creative response to this challenge, exploring how revenue from music streaming can be harnessed to support biodiversity conservation and unlock new funding streams for nature.

Learn more about the Sounds Right initiative

1%of biodiversity budgets support the tropics.

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Only 1% of the biodiversity budgets of developed countries are allocated to the tropics, despite the fact that these regions host the vast majority of the world’s species and are critical for global ecosystem stability.

$19.3 billionearned through music streaming in 2023.

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Music streaming generated $19.3 billion in 2023, showcasing its potential to support biodiversity by directing a share of its revenues toward conservation.

How

At the Hempel Foundation, we see conservation finance as an integral component of our biodiversity agenda. Put simply, without sustained financing in place there can be no long-term future for biodiversity conservation.

Too much reliance on philanthropy is risky, so diversified funding can reduce that risk. We therefore incorporate sustainable financing models into every landscape initiative we fund, aiming to ensure that the critical conservation activities of those landscapes will not depend on philanthropy in perpetuity. We support initiatives today that will pay for conservation tomorrow.

In addition to landscape-scale conservation finance initiatives, we also support global initiatives that increase the financing available for biodiversity. One such initiative is our partnership with the Museum for the United Nations – UN Live.

By supporting their vision to launch the Sounds Right music movement, we hoped to help create an entirely new source of funding for biodiversity conservation that values and monetises the sounds of nature as a way to support conservation at a global scale. The aim is that by simply listening to a Sounds Right track – music that features nature in songwriting or production – fans will directly protect the environment through a portion of royalties being disbursed to high-impact conservation initiatives. This would therefore create an entirely new source of funding for conservation that has vast potential for impact at scale.

Listen to Nature on Spotify

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Music streaming’s massive reach and revenue present a unique opportunity to fund nature conservation, turning every listen into direct support for protecting the planet’s biodiversity.

Accelerating Change

The Road to Change

Developing the Product
Creating an Entirely New Source of Funding for Biodiversity Conservation
Sounds Right is an initiative that was created and led by UN Live. It was developed and delivered in close partnership with a wide range of partners from multiple different sectors - musicians, creatives, nature sound recordists, as well as environmental, campaigning and global advocacy organisations.

Through Sounds Right, NATURE was registered as an artist on various music streaming platforms and owns its own Nature sounds. By simply listening to a Sounds Right track – pure nature sounds, or human artists featuring NATURE – fans will directly protect the environment because a portion of royalties are disbursed to high-impact conservation initiatives in important areas for biodiversity around the world.
Focusing the Funding
Identifying Regions Where Funds Will Have Significant Impact
Sounds Right aims to provide royalties from NATURE to conservation efforts in key biodiversity areas within the global biodiversity hotspots that have among the highest rates of plant and animal diversity, as well as high rates of endemism and threat, while ensuring a mix in geographies and biomes to ensure broad appeal to listeners.
Working with conservation scientists, they identified the most impactful regions to focus NATURE’s funding. This includes Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands, Indo-Burma, India and Myanmar, the Sundaland hotspot in Indonesia, the Philippines, the Tropical Andes, and the Atlantic Forests of Brazil.
Grant-Making to Partners
Allocating Funds to High Impact Partners
The launch of Sounds Right was not a one-off event, it was the start of a global movement for nature. The funds generated through the royalties from NATURE are used to target precious and precarious ecosystems. The royalties are spent in an ethical way, and they support nature’s guardians.
Despite only recently being launched, the fund has already begun to give out grants. In 2024, it piloted the first round of grant funding to a range of conservation projects led by national NGOs in Colombia, totalling $225,000. Following learnings from the pilot, the Expert Advisory Panel and Sounds Right partners will communicate criteria for 2025 applications and expects to give out substantially more funding in the coming years.

our partners

We work with trusted partners to protect and restore biodiversity by supporting conservation efforts, promoting sustainable land use, and investing in nature-based solutions that create lasting impact.

UN Live

UN Live drives global action on environmental challenges through culture and storytelling. By engaging diverse audiences through film, music, and gaming, UN Live connects people to urgent issues and mobilizes collective action.

"
So far, we’ve failed to address the root cause of the biodiversity crisis. Our economic model doesn’t value nature adequately, instead treating it as a resource to be exploited or a place to dump waste. Today we take a small but significant step in rectifying this - by simply listening to NATURE’s music, millions of fans have directed royalties to conservation projects in one of the world’s most precious ecosystems.

Gabriel Smales

Global Programme Director for Sounds Right at UN Live