sustainability
Most people might not open their streaming platform of choice and play a track of wave sounds or bird calls. But on the cross-DSP page that lists “Nature” as an official artist, listeners will hear many of Mother Earth’s greatest hits, rarities and B-sides woven into songs from a growing group of musicians making nature-infused music for a good and urgent cause.
Launched in April 2024, this project, called Sounds Right, raises money for conservation efforts by generating royalties from noises credited to “nature.” On Tuesday (April 22), in honor of Earth Day, the multi-genre playlist is adding music from 36 new artists, all of whom have created original songs incorporating elements like the crashing of waves and glaciers, the delicate buzz of moth wings, running antelopes and wildlife in the dense Amazonian rainforest — all recorded out in the field.
Some of the artists involved include U.K. disco pop duo Franc Moody, Belgian techno star Amelie Lens, Indian pop artist Armaan Malik, hip-hop group KAM-BU and Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello. A track by I. JORDAN features the call of the U.K.’s rare Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, while London producer Alice Boyd layered vintage 1970s bird songs with present-day recordings to illustrate the natural soundscapes that have been lost to human development. Many of the project’s archival nature sounds were donated by esteemed field recording artist Martyn Stewart and his project, The Listening Planet.
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As the music industry grapples with how to mitigate climate change within the sector, Sounds Right’s expansion is another indicator that artists are keen to plug into opportunities to help. Sounds Right global program director Gabriel Smales tells Billboard that many of these artists were recruited by EarthPercent and Eleutheria Group — both Sounds Right partners who reached out to musicians with “what we think is one of the most meaningful creative opportunities in music,” he says. Other artists reached out to Sounds Right directly with a desire to contribute, raise money and, Smales says, “treat the natural world as a partner — a creative force with something urgent to say.”
While the original group of Sounds Right artists mostly remixed pre-existing songs to incorporate wind, waves, birds and more, Tuesday’s addition is largely new music, a shift that Smales says “tells us this isn’t a one-time campaign — it’s becoming a space for genuine artistic and cultural expression.” He cites an ambitious goal of “every artist” making at least one track “with Nature” and says Sounds Right will soon be announcing a way for anyone who’d like to participate to get on board.
A huge incentive to do so? The project is working. The tracks included in Sounds Right’s 2024 launch have racked up more than 100 million streams from more than 10 million listeners, with Smales citing “significant” media interest and social media engagement. In the last year, Sounds Right has raised $225,000 for Indigenous and community-led conservation in the Tropical Andes, an area famous for its biodiversity, with $100,000 coming from royalties and the rest coming from individual and institutional donations.
This money has funded organizations like Colombia’s Fundación Proyecto Tití, which protects critically endangered cotton-top tamarin monkeys and employs locals to steward more than 2,200 acres of regenerated forest. The money from Sounds Right has specifically funded the group’s restoration work with local farmers and the preservation of forest corridors. Meanwhile, money donated to Reserva Natural La Planada is being used to invest in scientific tourism and the protection of biocultural heritage across nearly 8,000 acres of land governed by 10 Indigenous communities in Colombia’s Awá Pialapí Pueblo Reserve.
As more artists contribute and Sounds Right streams grow, royalties are expected to scale “significantly,” says Smales, at which point leaders will invite more donors and match-funders to multiply funding. Smales anticipates committing “far more” funding in 2025 than in 2024 and aims to raise $5 million annually by 2028.
But he says Sounds Right leaders “are under no illusion” that $5 million a year will fix the accelerating horrors of climate change and attendant environmental degradation. Wildlife populations have dropped by an average of 69% in the past 50 years, more than 1.2 million species are currently at risk of extinction and more than two-thirds of the Earth’s land and marine ecosystems have been degraded by human activity. Meanwhile, wildfires, floods, extreme heat and other weather events are affecting delicate ecosystems and displacing humans and animals around the world.
“So far we’ve failed to address the root cause of the biodiversity crisis,” Smales says. “Our economic model doesn’t value nature properly, treating it as a resource to be optimally exploited and a place to dump our waste.” As such, a major goal for Sounds Right is getting people to see nature’s inherent value and recognizing the earth as not just something we use and live on, but as a living entity to protect.
Sounds Right is pushing this message on multiple continents. In Denmark, the project is helping send young people on artist-led nature trips and encouraging them to share 10-second field recordings as part of a #naturesings campaign. In Colombia, Sounds Right partner VozTerra is supporting teachers to train their students in acoustic ecology. A project in Kenya is forthcoming, as is additional music to be added to the playlist in conjunction with World Mental Health Day in October. Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in the Brazilian Amazon this November, Sounds Right will spotlight musical “collaborations” with the Amazon and Congo Basins, which together produce roughly 40% of the world’s oxygen and which are targeted to start receiving Sounds Right funding from 2025 onwards.
While climate change is daunting and the world is vast, Smales thinks Sounds Right has huge potential to effect change, given that it meets people in a very personal place: “their ears and the phones in their pockets.” The idea is to create greater interest in and love for nature by putting it in the music we all live our lives to, an awakening Smales hopes will inspire people to do more and to demonstrate the public demand for change to business and political leaders.
“We’re working,” he says, “to go beyond the headphones and build a deeper sense of agency in our collective efforts to protect the planet.”
In conjunction with today’s global celebration of Earth Day, Merlin and IMPALA have announced the launch of a new fund intended to accelerate the independent music community’s push towards sustainability.
The initiative is named the Weidenmüller Sustainability Fund in honor of late !K7 founder Horst Weidenmüller, who co-founded Merlin and was a board member for both the digital music licensing partner for indies and IMPALA, the European organization that represents 6,000 independent music companies spread across 30 countries.
Before he passed away in February at age 60, Weidenmüller was central to the creation of the sustainability program IMPALA launched in 2021. This included the 2022 launch of a carbon calculator to assist labels in measuring and reducing their environmental impact through practices like tracking the climate impact of their office energy and water use, their commuting, their business travel and their manufacturing and distribution efforts.
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The new fund will provide resources to further develop and enhance this carbon calculator and make it more globally available, support IMPALA in offering advice and training to independent labels and distributors that use the tool and support the work of the IMPALA task force Weidenmüller created in 2020.
IMPALA has an established history of furthering sustainability. Its 2021 Climate Charter created sustainability frameworks in the indie sector, and in 2024 the company released the results of a study looking at the economic benefits of taking sustainability action. This new joint initiative reinforces a commitment by Merlin in equipping rightsholders with tool to address emerging industry challenges.
“Horst was not only a fierce advocate for independent music, but also for our planet,” Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota says in a statement. “He believed in driving real and sustaining change—through leadership, innovation, and action. We all have a role to play in the preservation of our planet and a more sustainable future. Merlin is proud to launch the Weidenmüller Sustainability Fund and to help meet our commitment through the incredible work of IMPALA.”
“Horst was a true visionary,” continues IMPALA executive chair Helen Smith. “He believed in the power of collective initiatives as well as the business case or individual action. This fund honors Horst’s profound impact across the whole industry.”
Earlier this month Create Music Group announced its acquisition of !K7, the indie electronic label Weidenmüller founded in 1985. Upon the announcement, !K7 CEO Tom Nieuweboer says the partnership will allow the label “to scale our vision while staying true to our core values of independent artistry, innovation, and quality.”
Of the new fund, Nieuweboer adds that “Horst was my companion, mentor, and friend for decades. His passion for music always went hand in hand with a deep sense of responsibility for our planet which was becoming part of the DNA of !K7. Horst was a true role model – for me personally, and for many across the music industry. The launch of the Weidenmüller Sustainability Fund is not only a tribute to his commitment but also a call to the industry to follow in his footsteps. This fund ensures that his vision will not only be remembered but actively carried forward with real impact.”
How did you get to the last concert you attended?
If you’re like most music fans in the United States and Canada, you probably traveled by car. While taking public transportation would be more environmentally friendly, it’s less likely you went by bus or shuttle.You might be among the few that took the least environmentally friendly option and flew.
Now a new study by REVERB, the longstanding organization focused on sustainability in touring and the broader music industry, is presenting a comprehensive report on all the ways concert attendees get to shows. The study aims to better understand fan travel – long known as the biggest carbon emitter in the live music space – and facilitate solutions to bring down concerts’ environmental impact.
This study was done by REVERB over the last two years at more than 400 shows in over 170 North American cities. REVERB representatives surveyed more than 35,000 fans, asking them about how they got to the show, how they would’ve preferred to get there and the barriers that prevented them from taking a more sustainable travel option.
Out today (April 21), the results of REVERB’s Concert Travel Study aim to give a better sense of the playing field while demonstrating that fans want greener options, info that’s altogether meant to encourage collaboration on solutions among venues, promoters, artists and fans.
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The study finds that driving is by far the most common way that fans get to shows, with 80% of respondents reporting taking a car. On average, 3,321 gas powered or hybrid vehicles were driven to any given show. On average, each car went 144 miles roundtrip and carried 2.5 people.
Meanwhile, just 9% of attendees used public transportation, although 33% percent said they would if there were better options available. And while only 7% of fans flew to shows, those flights accounted for 60% of all fan travel emissions.
All in, the study finds that fan travel creates 38 times more emissions than artist and crew travel, tour-related hotel stays and gear transportation combined. The average 11,000 capacity show creates 527 metric tons of fan travel-related carbon emissions, the equivalent of the energy it would take to power 110 homes for a year. On average, even larger concerts create 824 metric tons of carbon emissions.
But 89% of fans would take more sustainable transit options if there were better options and almost everyone surveyed — 90% of participates — said they’re concerned about climate change. See the complete study here.
“We’ve always known that fan travel is the biggest emitter, because you have thousands of fans versus a couple band members or crew members,” says REVERB’s director of impact Madeline Weir tells Billboard. “But the point isn’t to put pressure on fans or say its their fault; we want this to be an opportunity for artists, venues and the industry at large to acknowledge fan travel as the biggest source of emissions and work together with fans to see what solutions would make the fan experience better.”
The study suggests solutions like incentivized carpooling, which would provide better parking spots and expedited exit lanes to fans who arrive with a certain number of people in the car.
Weir also cites a desire to work with the aviation industry to help generate a bigger marketplace for sustainable aviation fuels, in order to bring down the cost of this fuel. Greener air travel is especially crucial when it comes to artist residencies, which typically entail most audience members traveling to see a stationary show.
“We’re never going to say to a band, you shouldn’t do [a residency], because it’s a fan experience and we definitely work with bands that do them,” Weir says. “It’s about talking about solutions with a band and their teams. And a lot of the artists that are at that [residency] scale are already doing a lot for climate, whether it be the offsetting model or more the philanthropy-based model.”
Weir also notes the importance of strategic routing, as emissions are naturally lower when fans travel shorter distances for a show. To wit, when an artist REVERB has partnered with provides the organization with their tour routing, REVERB provides them with information to send out to fans about various sustainable transit options, from carpooling to public transit to bike lanes. REVERB is also partnering with venues to provide tailored data from the study on what each specific venue can do to help fans arrive in greener ways.
The study was co-funded by Billie Eilish, a longtime REVERB partner and of the greenest artists in music. At the Los Angeles and Phoenix dates for Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour this past December, Elish’s team provided shuttles from various park and rides for faster, greener transport to shows, demonstrating that there are straightforward options for artists who want to platform sustainability.
“Artists, venues and fans all need to work together to improve our environment,” Eilish says in a statement. “From solar-powered live shows to more sustainable touring, my team is always looking for ways to help the planet. I have the greatest fans in the world, and I hope this study will be a helpful resource for those looking to learn more about transportation options that cut down on pollution and build a better future for live music.”
REVERB is also helping venues and events look at what Weir calls sustainable “micro-mobility,” including gas powered shuttles, golf carts and other on-site transportation. (She cites Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome as a venue that’s currently enacting such measures.) REVERB is also currently working with Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, NY to create bike valets and promote the use of public transit.
“At Forest Hills, we promote public transit options as the number one way to arrive at the venue,” says the venue’s co-manager Mike Luba. “We love when partners like REVERB and artists amplify this promotion to reduce the number of emitting vehicles driven to our shows. It’s truly better for fans, the community, and us.”
Altogether, the study emphasizes the growing concern about, and push for, sustainability in the industry, with U.S. venues and events increasingly exploring clean energy technology, swapping single-use plastic cups for reusable options and encouraging artists, agents and promoters to incorporate green clauses in various contracts. This work is catching up the sustainability efforts REVERB has been enacting in the live sector since it was created in 2004, with the organization’s co-founder Adam Gardner saying that “listening to fans has always been key to our success.”
While the REVERB study encompasses a lot of data and many options for improvements, what it ultimately makes clear is that demand for greener travel options is significant, with 94% of fans saying they want to be able to take collective action on the issue.
“Venues, artists, promoters and fans themselves all have responsibility to do this together,” says Weir.
This Tuesday (April 15), hundreds of people from across the music industry gathered in Hollywood for the second annual Music Sustainability Summit.
Organized by the Music Sustainability Alliance (MSA), the event again brought together thought-leaders and innovators from the live music, labels, waste management, merch, food, design and production sectors. Panels and breakout sessions — curated around the event’s “progress through collaboration” theme — focused on the challenges and, more crucially, the many solutions that currently exist and can be implemented at scale as the industry takes on the ongoing climate crisis that’s affecting touring, events, the supply chain and the health and wellness of artists, teams, fans and the Earth itself.
“Sustainability is good for the planet and it’s good for business, and it’s being led by the people in this room,” MSA CEO/co-founder Amy Morrison said at the start of the day, “but we’re not done. There’s still more to learn, more to share and more to do. And let’s be honest, this work is only getting more important as some political forces pull back from climate commitments and even try to undermine environmental progress. It’s falling on industries like ours to step up and lead.”
The day began with a stirring performance from singer and environmental activist Antonique Smith and a rousing conversation with activist Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr., who emphasized the importance of artists and not just engaging in performative activism, but truly engaging with the people who are feeling the very real effects of the climate crisis. “You have to be amongst the people,” Yearwood Jr. told the rapt crowd. “Not only will it make you a better artist, but you will transform yourself by being with the people and feeling the crisis. It will allow you to create art that is divine, that is otherworldly. You will begin to create something that isn’t just pain and depression, but something that could actually change and save this world.
The day of conversations went on to provide huge insights on the many ways the music industry can transition to greater sustainability and do its part in humanity’s greatest challenge, via panel topics that included live music emissions in the U.S. and U.K., why paying attention to menus at venues at events is important, the evolving clean energy sector, strategies that are being used in film, sports and live theater, sustainability in contracts and more.
Here are five things we learned from the conference.
The Music Industry Could Be Greener Through More Strategic Planning
A trio of in-depth environmental impact reports are set to be presented for the first time each at next week’s Music Sustainability Summit in Los Angeles.
Representatives from MIT will be at the event to present their Live Music Emissions in the UK and US report, a comprehensive study of the live music industry’s carbon footprint.
The report aims to create a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between live music and climate change, identify primary areas where the industry and concert goers can make tangible improvements to reduce emissions and provide analysis of the latest developments in green technology and sustainable practices. This study has been co-funded and supported by Warner Music Group, Live Nation and Coldplay.
Additionally, Madeline Weir, director of impact at REVERB will present the longstanding organization’s Concert Travel Study, which highlights concert travel — one of the largest sources of live music-related emissions — and shows how the broad music community can address it through collective action. This report is based on insights from more than 35,000 fans at over 400 shows and offers practical, scalable solutions to create more sustainable concerts.
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Finally, representatives from sustainability programs at Columbia University will present a report analyzing current practices, surveying the regulatory landscape and identifying challenges and opportunities related to implementing sustainability practices in venues. An accompanying toolkit will offer tips on how venues can integrate sustainability into their business operations. This report was done in partnership with the Music Sustainability Alliance, with support from OVG and AEG.
The second annual Music Sustainability Summit happens on April 15 at Solotech Studios in Los Angeles. The day-long gathering will offer a robust schedule featuring talks, panel discussions, networking opportunities, performances and more. See the complete program here.
Passes for the Summit are available here. Billboard is the official media sponsor of the event.
“Providing a platform for our partners to present their research at MSS25 is about turning knowledge into momentum,” says Amy Morrison, CEO and Co-founder of the Music Sustainability Alliance. “Whether it’s fan travel, venue operations, or the emissions footprint of live music, these studies help identify where the biggest challenges and the greatest opportunities exist. At MSA, we’re here to ensure the industry has the tools and insights it needs to lead on climate.”
Activist Artist Management has named climate activist Wawa Gatheru its 2025-2027 Foundation Fellow.
As part of the fellowship, Gatheru will receive a $20,000 grant and access to a professional team of pro-bono representatives — including management, publicity, legal, business management, agency representation, partnerships and strategic alliances, digital marketing, and content creation representatives — to further her environment-focused work. Activist will also appoint a pro-bono Fellowship Advisory Council of specialists in relevant areas to support Gatheru’s work.
Funding for the grant comes from Activist Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established by Activist Artists Management to fund advocates and initiatives that protect vulnerable communities and the environment. The announcement comes via Activist founding partners Bernie Cahill and Greg Suess, who serve as co-chairs of Activist Foundation, along with Caitlin Stone Jasper, partner/head of activism for Activist Artists Management. Stone Jasper will also oversee Gatheru’s fellowship.
A Rhodes Scholar and longtime youth climate activist, Gatheru is the founder of Black Girl Environmentalist, a national organization dedicated to empowering Black girls, women and gender expansive people across the climate sector. She sits on boards and advisory councils for organizations including Greenpeace USA, EarthJustice, Climate Power, the National Parks Conservation Association, Good Energy and Sound Future. She was also recently named as a 2025 Sierra Club Trail Blazer Award recipient alongside Quannah Chasinghorse, Bill Nye, William Shatner and Dr. Jane Goodall.
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“I am honored and excited to receive this fellowship from the Activist Foundation,” said Gatheru in a statement. “This support is invaluable. It will allow me to expand my work at the intersection of environmental justice and youth empowerment. I am grateful for their belief in my vision, and I look forward to collaborating with the team at Activist to drive meaningful progress toward a more sustainable and just future for all.”
“Wawa is one of the most impressive young leaders I’ve ever encountered,” added Stone Jasper. “Her vision, her voice and her commitment to building an inclusive climate movement are exactly what the world needs right now. Our whole team is thrilled to welcome her to the Activist family and support the powerful work she’s doing.”
The Activist Foundation created the Activist Artists Fellowship in 2020 to support young activists working to create real change on the world’s most pressing issues. Activist Artists clients include The Lumineers, Bobby Weir, Dwight Yoakam, the Grateful Dead, Dead & Company (co-managed by Irving Azoff and Steve Moir), Leif Vollebekk, The Pretty Reckless, Young the Giant, and Michael Franti & Spearhead.
The second annual Music Sustainability Summit has announced the speakers and agenda for the event that’s set to take place next month in Los Angeles. Topics to be discussed during the day-long gathering include: Live Music Emissions in the U.K. and U.S. Behind the Tracks: Music Production, Delivery, and Consumption Beyond Backlash: The High Stakes […]
AJR is transitioning into just JR for 2025. The sibling trio took to social media on Tuesday (March 4) to announce that member Adam Met will be stepping away from live performances throughout the year to focus on his climate efforts. “We’re so proud of what he’s doing in this space,” the band wrote in […]
The Music Sustainability Alliance announced Friday (Jan. 17) that its Music Sustainability Summit is being postponed amid the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires. Originally scheduled to happen on Feb. 3, the event will now be held on April 16 at L.A.’s Solotech Studios, the same location where it was originally set to take place. Programming for the […]
When Martyn Stewart was 11 years old, he spent countless hours in the woods near his family’s home in Birmingham, England. It was the mid 1960s, and out there in the untouched forest he was captivated by the sounds of nature: the wind, the animals, the water in the streams.
It was around this time that he acquired a recording device and brought it outside. “The first recording I ever made that I kept was the Eurasian Blackbird,” Stewart says today. “He became my mate. He was the guy who taught me melodies.”
Decades later, Stewart’s collection of nature sounds includes 97,000 individual recordings making up 30,000 hours. (That’s roughly 3.5 years.) The library includes the sounds of more than 3,500 bird species, countless insects, and myriad frogs, toads, mammals, trees, deserts, oceans and more, with Stewart capturing these field recordings in more than 60 countries.
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Now, a select few of them are folded into Imperfect Cadence, a collaborative album by Stewart and Robert Shields, a Scottish singer, songwriter and producer who makes music under the moniker ONR. On the album, Shields sings and plays instruments that complement and fuse with sounds Stewart recorded in Scotland during the mid-1970s, a time he spent traveling across the country — often on foot — recording the symphony of its vast, untouched and famously stunning wilderness.
It was “a sanctuary where I could go and lose myself, basically,” Stewart says. “Anywhere you dropped a microphone, you got a fantastic recording.” (Years later, when he was in his late 20s, Stewart learned that his biological father was Scottish, which he believes accounts for his affinity for the country.)
Martyn Shields in the 1970s
Courtesy of Martyn Stewart
Shields got involved in the project through Steven Melrose, the global head of creative at Los Angeles-based publishing company Seeker Music, who is also Scottish. Melrose was working with ONR when he was approached by Stewart’s niece, Amanda, who was hoping to mesh her uncle’s recordings with music in a respectful and contemporary way. Melrose introduced Shields and Stewart, and it was decided — given everyone’s connection to Scotland — the project would focus there.
Shields and Stewart subsequently met on Zoom to chat about making something together. Shields found himself entranced by Stewart’s life story and work. “The real kicker was when he then sent me the audio, which is just unbelievable,” Shields says.
Recordings include those Stewart made in areas around the famously picturesque Rannoch Moor, Culloden Moor, the site of a famous 1746 battle, and while walking along Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient Roman stone fortification dating back to 122 AD. “You kind of get into that mood of desolation and isolation,” Stewart says of being in these locations, even just through the audio. “You almost feel your primal self again. You can feel the blood pulsing through your veins.”
“The last thing I wanted to do was to take the audio and to mutilate it,” says Shields. “It was so beautiful in its raw form that I knew I had to treat it as a collaborator and not as a canvas.” Both artists were conscious of not wanting make “spa music, or something a little bit trite,” Shields adds.
Rannoch Moor, Scotland
Courtesy of Martyn Stewart
Imperfect Cadence is far from it. From the bird calls playing in tandem with Shield’s rich voice on the stirring opener “You & I” to the gentle waves on the orchestral “Than Water,” the project is a sophisticated and moving balance of input from both artists. “It was a genuine collaboration with the sort of oddity that Martyn wasn’t contributing musically,” says Shields. “He was contributing to the overall atmosphere and theme.”
Imperfect Cadence was released Dec. 5 on Seeker Music, with the company’s Melrose saying that given the album’s beauty, power and emotional depth he “couldn’t be prouder to be part of it alongside Martyn and Robert. Nature loves us unconditionally — we would do well to show it more love in return.”
Nature has indeed taken a hard hit in the decades since Stewart began recording it. Imperfect Cadence presents moments from the natural world that in many cases no longer exist due to subsequent human development and the noisy hum of traffic and people that it brings.
“Two-thirds of my archive is now extinct,” says Stewart. “We think of dinosaurs and dodos and Irish Elks being extinct, but we don’t look at sound as something that can disappear. But you can’t replicate what I’ve done. You can’t drop a microphone in the Serengeti and get what I did 20 years ago, because now there’s a road going through it.”
In more ways than one, Stewart understands what it’s like to look extinction in the eye. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer and given three to five years to live. These days he says he’s largely “bungee-corded to a hospital,” although when we speak, he’s in Louisiana on an expedition to make field recordings on the bayou. He’s planning to return to both Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Scotland’s Outer Hebrides islands to record.
“I’d like to go back to places to hear how much things have changed,” he says. “And I aim to. I’m living with cancer. I’m not dying with cancer.”
Imperfect Cadence is only one component of Stewart’s significant contribution to natural history, recorded sound and people interested in both. Roughly a decade ago, he was offered “a huge amount of money for the archive” by a company that makes videogame consoles. “I asked them where the library was going to end up, and they said it would be in a basement somewhere,” he recalls. “That was just absolutely a definite no.”
Instead, Stewart wants his prolific body of work to be used academically for students “who could benefit from the sounds” and by then be inspired to explore and protect nature. He foresees a portion of his catalog being donated to the British Library. “It has to be a voice for the natural world,” he says.
In fact, it already is. Imperfect Cadence is included in the Sounds Right project, a cross-DSP initiative launched in April that’s made “Nature” an official artist, with songs that incorporate nature sounds collected on a “Feat. Nature” playlist that’s earning royalties for conservation projects. (In October, the initiative announced that in its first six months, it raised $225,000 for conversation projects in Colombia’s Tropical Andes, a region with one of the world’s highest rates of biodiversity and native species.)
Robert Shields
Courtesy of Robert Shields
“It’s opened my eyes to the fact that there are incredible people working on sustainability, environmentalism, conservationism,” Shields says of being involved in Sounds Right. “When you get to dip your toe into a different world and see people who are committing so much time and energy to this stuff, it’s genuinely awe inspiring.”
For the time being, Stewart and Shields plan to meet in Scotland next month to make live versions of some of the album songs in several of the places where Stewart made the original recordings years back. “I’m so looking forward to that,” says Stewart. “And if that’s the last breath in my body, I’ll die a happy man.”
“We’ll have a whiskey and talk about the project,” says Shields.
“Or two whiskeys,” suggests Stewart.