Sound Therapy
Apple Music is joining forces with Universal Music Group (UMG) to introduce Sound Therapy, an innovative audio wellness collection designed to help listeners attain clearer focus, deeper relaxation, and better sleep.
[…]
Available exclusively on Apple Music, Sound Therapy blends songs subscribers already know and love with special sound waves designed to enhance users’ daily routines, while retaining the artist’s original vision. Backed by scientific research and powered by UMG’s proprietary audio technologies, Sound Therapy harnesses the power of sound waves, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science to help listeners relax or focus the mind.
[…]
Sound Therapy features three categories: Focus, Relax, and Sleep. Songs have been enhanced with auditory beats or colored noise to help encourage specific brain responses. Gamma waves and white noise — a whoosh-like combination of every sound frequency — may help with focusing; theta waves could aid in relaxation; and delta waves and pink noise — a deeper, gentler variation akin to rain or wind — might assist in achieving better sleep.
It’s obvious that music can be relaxing, but beyond that I’m skeptical. These ideas have been around for a while. I’ve tried a few implementations over the years and found them unhelpful and sometimes actively annoying. But a lot of people do seem to like them…
I’ve always been envious of people who can listen to music while they work. For whatever reason, music-listening activates a part of my brain that pulls me away from the task at hand. My mind really wants to focus on the lyrics, the style, the mix – all distractions from whatever it is I’m currently trying to do. It just doesn’t work for me.
[…]
I’ve listened to a sampling of songs from all three sections of the Sound Therapy library to get a feel for it. Relaxation was the one I was least skeptical about because humans have known for millennia that music has the power to soothe, and the songs I tried from that section certainly had a relaxing effect on me. I listened to some of the sleep tracks before bed, and they seemed conducive to getting me in a restful state, though it will take more time and testing to know for sure whether the feature has an actual impact on my quality of sleep.
The aspect of Sound Therapy that I found most convincing, though, was the section dedicated to focus. I really didn’t think I’d listen to much of it because I get so easily distracted by music while I work, but I queued up a selection of songs, hit play, and got to work. To my surprise, I didn’t find my attention being pulled away by what I was hearing. I was actually able to focus on the work I was doing and enjoy some nice music at the same time. I can’t say for sure that it was any particular frequency or rhythm that did it, but it felt like the songs actually were helping me stay in the zone. That’s an experience I’ve never had before.
Previously:
3 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
This sounds like BS. I don’t see any reference to scientific studies in the Apple’s PR article. Am I missing something?
I find any music distracting while working so I’m skeptical. My main objection though is that it seems like another example of an artists creative work being treated as *content*. So much modern technology has next to zero respect for art.
