(Rockville, MD-April 6, 2009) The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has added Tune A Fish Records, LLC, to its growing list of sponsors for the Listen To Your Buds component of ASHA's America: Tuned In Today ... But Tuned Out Tomorrow? campaign—an effort with a safe listening message about using personal audio technology.
Under the agreement, ASHA will receive financial and in-kind support from Tune A Fish Records, a leading national distributor of children's music and sound-limiting children's headphones. Also, Tune A Fish Records will donate a percentage of all sales from their sound-limiting headphones to the campaign. In addition, the company will work with its retail partners to conduct a variety of in-store promotions for ASHA's Listen To Your Buds campaign.
ASHA is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 130,000 speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Tune A Fish Records, LLC, distributes to retailers award-winning music targeted to children.
"We are very pleased that Tune A Fish Records will be helping us disseminate our safe listening message," 2009 ASHA President Sue Hale says. "Reaching out to parents, teachers, schools, and those independent retailers who sell music targeted to young children is an especially good fit for our campaign's safe listening message."
"Noise-induced hearing loss in children can lead to numerous developmental and academic achievement problems," according to Danny Fisher, President of Tune A Fish Records. "We believe it is our duty to protect a young child's hearing and educate parents, teachers, and retailers about using technology responsibly. Pairing with ASHA complements our core principles and works to ensure that we can help protect a child's hearing."
To celebrate and kickoff ASHA's annual May is Better Hearing and Speech Month (BHSM), the campaign will host a Listen to Your Buds concert on April 29 at The George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC, that will feature Billy Jonas. This latest concert will be a collaboration between ASHA and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health. Nearly 1,500 children from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC-area schools are expected to attend.
Since December 2005, ASHA's "America: Tuned In Today ... But Tuned Out Tomorrow?" campaign has been at the forefront of raising public awareness about the potential risk of hearing loss from unsafe usage of personal audio technology. The effort has attracted global media coverage, commissioned the first-ever national polling on usage habits of current personal audio technology, made cross-cultural minority outreach a focus of its activities, and appealed to a variety of ages through broadcast PSAs and tools like the kid-friendly "Buds" Web site, www.listentoyourbuds.org.
The ASHA-Tune A Fish Records collaboration is the most recent one to be announced. Over the past two years, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Califone International, Inc., Unwired Technology, WYNIT, Inc., and the rock group O.A.R have also joined forces with ASHA's campaign.
About the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
ASHA is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 135,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialize in preventing and assessing hearing and balance disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment including hearing aids. Speech-language pathologists identify, assess, and treat speech and language problems including swallowing disorders. www.asha.org.
About Tune A Fish Records, LLC
Tune A Fish Records, LLC, is a leading national distributor of children's music and sound-limiting children's headphones. The company operates with the core purpose of providing top-notch kid's music and in-store marketing solutions for the retailers they serve, as well as providing well-targeted and alternative retail channels of distribution for artists they represent. www.tuneafishrecords.com
