I Was Skeptical About This Music App That Claims to Help Me Focus, but It Really Helped Me.
Sometimes a life hack works when I don’t want it to. For example, I’m prone to depression and anxiety. I also hate running. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that regular jogging really helps my mental health. I’m grateful (because I feel better) and resentful (because I have to run).
Here’s what I think about Brain.fm, a music service I discovered a couple of weeks ago when the company contacted me. I started using the service, mainly to write this article, and something unexpected happened: I noticed it became much easier for me to start working in the morning. I like it (because I get more done), but at the same time, it’s annoying (because I’d rather listen to my favorite music).
It’s a tricky situation. Brain.fm is a subscription service that costs $14.99 per month, which is more expensive than Spotify (which costs $12.99 per month). The product is marketed as a research-based music collection believed to improve focus, meditation, and sleep quality. There’s also a free trial to help you see if it’s right for you.
After several weeks of testing, I think there’s something to this. Although I don’t always trust my intuition, I wanted to investigate further. Is this true? Or am I falling for a scam? And more importantly: will I be able to listen to KEXP in the mornings again?
Is Brain.fm scientifically sound?
After using the app for a few days, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is my increased focus real? Or is it a placebo effect?
So I wrote to Daniel J. Levitin, professor emeritus of neuroscience at McGill University and author of This Is How Your Brain Works When You Listen to Music: The Science of Human Obsession . He responded quickly and succinctly: “It’s all placebo,” he said.
It was a very succinct letter from a scientist on a complex topic, which is always a pleasure for a journalist. But Levitin didn’t stop there—he recommended I contact another neuroscientist who had published research on this type of modulated music. I’ll discuss this research in more detail below, but first, let’s look at what’s actually contained in these Brain.fm tracks.
How to use Brain.fm
You can’t search for a specific artist with this service—instead, you need to tell the app what you want to do (Focus, Relax, Meditate, or Sleep). The “Focus” section has several sub-items: Deep Work, Motivation, Creativity, Learning, and Light Work. Select your preferred activity, and the track will begin playing.
Genres, if you can even call them that, range from the “chill beats” you might find on YouTube to post-rock and symphonic music—though all of it is instrumental.
“The fundamental problem is that most music is designed to grab your attention,” Kevin Woods, a neuroscientist at Brain.fm, told me. “If you talk to a music producer, they’ll tell you their job is to make the music bright and energetic to get the listener to pay attention, turn their head, and favorite the song on Spotify.”
According to Woods, the desire to focus can be a subtle distraction from work if you play music during the workday. “The problem is that most distraction isn’t overt in the sense of, ‘I feel like my attention is wandering and I need to turn the music down or turn the volume down,’ but rather, ‘I’m working at 70-80% of my capacity, and I’m not quite sure why.'”
The music on Brain.fm is written and performed by in-house composers who deliberately strive to avoid distracting your attention. But this alone doesn’t make Brain.fm much different from using ambient music or video game soundtracks to enhance concentration, not to mention the various “relaxing rhythms” playlists and livestreams that exist online. And that’s where Brain.fm’s scientific claims come into play.
According to Brain.fm, the key to success is “amplitude modulation.”
Brain.fm’s homepage links to several scientific studies , and also mentions that their research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation. Many of the claims are based on “amplitude modulation,” which Woods told me is what distinguishes Brain.fm’s music from others.
But what is amplitude modulation? According to Woods, it’s “fast modulations that aren’t typically found in music.” If you listen to the music for a while, you’ll hear an almost fluttering sound. These sounds, which are added to compositions in post-production using AI, are available at three different levels for each track. “ADHD Mode,” the highest of the three modes, is the one I used most often during testing.
This effect is a bit disorienting, so I sometimes had to turn down the volume. It’s hard to deny that this is Brain.fm’s signature musical style. But does it work?
Research in the field of amplitude modulation is limited but promising.
I became a little less skeptical of the science after contacting an expert Levitin recommended: Psyche Louie , a neuroscientist, musician, and associate dean for research at Northeastern University. Louie told me that “this isn’t just a placebo,” pointing to a paper she published with Woods and other neuroscientists in the journal Communications Biology .
It’s worth clarifying that it’s not uncommon for scientists to disagree on how certain phenomena work—that’s part of the process. The claims made in the paper are narrow: the conclusion is that music with amplitude modulation can help people focus on tasks compared to both pink noise and music without amplitude modulation. The control music, according to Woods, consisted of the same tracks—the only difference was whether amplitude modulation was added. Testing and brain imaging results confirm the effect is real.
“We did something rarely done in music research: a very carefully controlled study in which only one factor in the music was changed,” Woods told me. As with all scientific research, there’s always more to learn. But I think a study making such claims, published in a journal affiliated with Nature, suggests there may be some truth to it.
At the very least, Brain.fm has helped me make sense of my relationship with music at work.
Brain.fm has also given me the opportunity to reflect on my relationship with music. I really enjoy discovering new music during the workday, but after a few weeks of using Brain.fm, I wonder if that’s the reason I have trouble concentrating in the morning.
Perhaps it’s better to listen to music that doesn’t fade into the background when I need to focus, and save searching for music for times when I only need partial attention. Or maybe the music I truly love should be listened to when I’m not working at all. Brain.fm, at least, has taught me that.
But I’ve also found that music really helps when I need to focus. I’m still not entirely sure if this effect is real, or if any music that blends into the background will do. Sometimes, when I need to focus, I play the entire Boards of Canada discography, and it works about as well.
With all that said, I really think anyone who has read this much about Brain.fm should see it for themselves.