Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep
brain.fm
brain.fm
If anyone from brain.fm is reading, don't underestimate how much resentment this kind of dishonest manipulation generates.
Check out the lofi streams on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHW1oY26kxQ
We are redoing our whole platform for January with a brand new account page. This functionality is included now.
Not affiliated, just a fan.
Also just a fan.
I'm going to change the main button to read "Try 5 Free Sessions" to be more direct!
Here is their white paper.
https://brain.fm/assets/pdfs/new_white_paper_unformatted.pdf
This appears to be the extent of their claim:
"Behavioral results suggested this music did help people over time, but the differences in the brain appeared first, were easier to see, and verified that the experimental manipulation (added modulation) was having a measurable impact on brain activity beyond auditory cortex"
Continuing down the rabbit hole, here is their grant application:
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1720698
They are pursuing publication of a paper, but I can't find anything about it beyond what is on their website.
Also found this other FAQ paper:
https://www1.brain.fm/assets/pdfs/science_FAQ.pdf
They claim their music can improve slow-wave sleep, although this study looked at just three subjects
When I was travelling last year I used the nap / sleep mode a bit and I found it did help if I was finding it hard to sleep.
Of course this is totally subjective so your mileage may vary.
Brain.fm does "work" in that it definitely has helped me focus, but I think one could craft a Spotify playlist manually with some effort in order to achieve a similar effect.
Wish I had thought to listen to sleep mode last night between 3 and 6 AM while I was tossing and turning in bed.
As someone mentioned below, I could put together a Spotify list but why? Brain.fm does the job and I don't need to.
When I need to focus, my two choices are Brain.fm or "Ok, Google. Play some downtempo ambient chill instrumental". The latter oftentimes distracts me. The former doesn't.
I was having some technical difficulties with the site (not the apps) a while back. The head of the company was helping me to debug the problem. Great customer service. Turned out it was something on my end.
I too landed the lifetime subscription.
Highly recommended!
Because I already pay for spotify?
Silence is a very poor control indeed! We absolutely test against other music. For internal R&D we've tested against 'focus music' taken from other services, but this is not necessarily something you want to do in an academic paper.
Instead, in a paper we're working on, we take the even more controlled approach of testing music that is exactly the same, except for the addition of particular kinds of processing (this work is in prep for submission).
The question of preference and genre is very important for effectiveness, and people differ enormously. We try to offer a wide enough variety so people can select what works best for them in terms of musical style.
But no matter what the genre, Brain.fm's techniques are applied to make that music more suited to the task at hand.
For example, we do offer a selection of Brain.fm-ified Bach (in the Classical Focus section, under 'more music' in the web app). I love Bach but find it distracting when I'm trying to focus. Brain.fm processing removes some distraction while keeping the stimulating feel of the music.
Thanks for checking us out!
The links you found are right, but we're evolving quickly and I want to help clarify:
1) The quote from the white paper is taken from a section titled 'How do we run experiments?' and is just one example of a particular experiment to illustrate why brain-imaging is helpful in our work.
Our claim is that we make useful music, and the white paper explains our process. As for particular experiments, we run tests of sustained attention, and look at EEG, fMRI, and other relevant measures depending on the category of music being made. Doing the science properly takes time and is expensive and we're doing our best to work on new collaborations to help speed this up.
If anyone knows anyone that can help here, please send me an email at dan@brain.fm
2) We are just about to submit a paper (and are working on others). We've been working to get peer-reviewed results out to the public, and can't wait to share. This is really important to Brain.fm and myself as science is the one thing that differentiates what we are trying to do.
3) The Sleep-EEG document shows pilot results on a small number of participants. These results are promising, but we have shifted more into focus as we received support (from the NSF and others) to pursue our Focus music, which led to the papers we're about to submit. We have plans to get more funding and research in sleep for 2019.
This is part of our new rollout and new platform, but if anyone wants to take a peek, here is the new science PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/u/2/d/1kGDOxD0bnFrncNKFdljdkCe...
I'd try this if I could without creating an account. Maybe I'm missing an immediate test somewhere (start listening now makes me create an account).
Also please add google/github auth. I'm really over making accounts everywhere, especially if I'm just trying something out to see if I'll use it, a lot of us are no longer (or never were) fb users. You definitely want more options available.
Source: myNoise mobile app developer (currently busy rewriting the Android one in rust due to insanely costly audio codec licenses on Android)
The only exceptions being the super generators which are pages where multiples sound generators are mixed together on the same page.
Edit: It was confusing how this message is under the myNoise discussion thread. The parent comment of my answer was talking about Brain.fm
To Brainfm: Five to ten seconds of time is generous of users to give, you have to make it count.
I always hated working in open offices and used to play the same white noise over and over again.
With myNoise, every day is different... sometimes I "visit" a Japanese shrine... sometimes I'm on a ship in the middle of a storm... other times, I'm in the middle of suburb living memory lane while listening to the birds and lawnmowers driving around...
The best part of the site is how you can customize every single generators. On the generator pages, there's user testimonials with little heart icons. When you click the icon, it loads the exact preset that the person leaving the review had customized. The site is endless with possibilities.
Stéphane, the developer, has a Slack channel going for the premium users (donation based) and is super friendly to requests.
I'm probably one of the site's top fans and I can't recommend it enough.
When I was a junior developer who had no idea about software engineering, I found the focus mode just dumped me into that deep pit of focus where it's just you and what you're working with in a space in your head. This allowed me to get into the legacy spaghetti and actually do what I was supposed to be doing.
I still use it to this day (meditation this morning, work soon), and they recently added a 'drone' focus track that (for me) is to white noise what white noise is to someone tapping you in the shoulder and asking if you got the email they just sent.
I recommend actually trialing it for a month and seeing if you can get into it, because if you can it's so useful.
Here are more detailed thoughts: https://medium.com/@kentf/nootropic-review-brain-fm-addddeee...
The reason is that my choice of music depends on my mood. e.g. If I met a cute girl on my way to getting a coffee in the morning, I want to listen to birds chirp with the sound of waves in the background. But if I am feeling my usual lethargic morning self, I would go for singing bowls in a coffee shop sound mix combined with a distant thunder.
It goes without saying how grateful I am to people who put in the effort to understand psyche and it's connection with music so that we can all be more productive.
Glossolalia :- https://www.osho.com/meditate/more-meditations/meditation-of...
No-mind meditation :- http://www.oshomeditations.com/no-mind-therapy/
It's a simple method which has tremendous benefits. If used regularly it brings permanent transformation gradually.
Lately, many apps are coming with music and what not which is nothing but the hypnosis. Hypnosis is like a drug, a temporary technique which only has instant effects but not permanent one.
Gibberish (No-mind active meditation) is a more flexible and workable version of Glossolalia.
Most important one, Do not judge the outcome of the process while you are doing it or after it. Your conscious mind will play a trick to persuade somehow you to not do it by creating a different kind of thoughts. Don't Reject them. Don't Accept them. Just observe.
Do it in a room which is empty or with minimum things in it.
It's better done standing than sitting and allowing the hand and legs to move in whichever direction they want. Again Don't JUDGE. Just observe.
Do it empty stomach if possible or at least 2-3 hours of Veg meal and 5 hours after a non-veg meal. This is to ensure your stomach digestion process does not get affected when you release your repressed thoughts in a vacuum.
Do it for 15 minutes if you are okay with gradual results which take few months, 30 minutes to 1 hour if you need results in days. I do it for 30 minutes daily 2 times, before going to bed and in the morning after nature's call.
I regularly and routinely return to the site when I really want to concentrate. I might drift back to Spotify for interesting tunes, but whenever I want to really focus on work brain.fm works (for me) much better than "regular" music. As always, everyone is different.
I think I paid about $50 for it and think it was absolutely worth it. Knowing what I know now, I'd say even the $150 full price lifetime subscription is a good value. From their website it doesn't appear that they offer lifetime subscriptions anymore, which is unfortunate. I don't know if I would pay monthly for this service.
For those of you that already purchased Brain.fm—if you prefer a separate application for music, I would checkout Fluid App. It essentially turns the Brain.fm website into a windowed application. https://fluidapp.com/
I find Nujabes "homework edits" on YouTube far better for focus and productivity.
A few links to get you started:
I find Youtube more effective (I've found my sweet spot near 150BPM trance which gets me into the zone rather quickly if nobody interrupts me). Also I think the problem is while repetitive music works great with programming you have to find different music for each day.
Just use web radio, that way you don't have to spend time finding/managing new music.
https://DI.fm is a totally awesome alternative, they have a channel for every electronic genre you can think of. Just music, no talking or jingles.
I usually listen to their Goa-Psy Trance channel while working, it's around your BPM: https://www.di.fm/goapsy
I have compared their copies of the music to the originals, and the originals were already 'loudness war' loud, there was no reason to do this further.
However, I don't think they'll ever change because DI has been this way for the past 20 years (they celebrate their 20th in December 2019).
When I want to put on something with a little more substance while I work I'll listen to Tim Hecker, Brian Eno, Four Tet, Kelly Lee Owens, Boards of Canada, Clark, Jamie XX, or Aphex Twin.
<MontyPython>It works, mate!</MonthyPython>
I regularly have problems with the ios and Android apps not downloading or connecting, and generally just work with them "offline" with my few successful downloads.
I use the sleep music whenever I travel, combined with my Bose QC20s it's great for blocking out aircraft noise or even as I discovered on a boy's weekend the snoring off my bunkmate who people in other rooms complained about.
I don't know about their scientific claims, but for me it does what I want, which is distraction free blocking of the (audible) world around me.
Everytime I read this, I think back to the Quake soundtrack by Trent Reznor, especially the opening track, and think "That's not what I want to listen to when I'm coding." (Awesome as it is. :-)
I'll have to look into these strategy games you mention.
Sorry never heard of this and hearing this many HN members gush about a not that well known paid service is odd.
As for how well it works: I use it less and less as I get more of a managers schedule, but really liked it when I was programming most of the time. I still feel like I should use it more. Way less distracting than music and good rhythm to keep your mind going.
Any chance to have a Black Friday lifetime promo this year? (for those that regrettably missed before) Thanks!
This being said, today I was feeling a need to look up and use, or quickly create some new binaural beats for myself to work listening to, and found this.
So far ( after the first half-hour ) I've experienced a dramatic increase in energy, concentration, higher acuity, and all the traits I came to expect from binaural beats.
Would definitely subscribe after the trial so far.
I curate a fairly large (over 46 hours) Spotify playlist for coding: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ZwAxFYf7y36Al1e1DKUlu
It has a lot of eccentric "spacemusic", but my criteria is simply to add songs when they help me focus on coding, and remove them when I find that they distract from it. It's in no particular order, so I recommend shuffle play.
- Markus Shulz Presents Global DJ Broadcast - Above and Beyond: Group Therapy
There are many more, these two are my favorites.
brain.fm seems to work for me, so I bought a lifetime subscription back when it was available, but the iOS app is flaky enough that I don't use it that often. I don't understand what the "AI" is doing for me, but it makes the experience worse. I'd rather have a static set of music files that are in the app so that I can play them offline (e.g., while traveling). Or even better, not in the app so that I can put them into a music player. The app does have an offline mode but it's awkward.
I recently learned Pzizz (which is nice for sleep) added a focus mode. I should try that sometime. Their app is much more reliable than brain.fm's app. However they don't have a lifetime purchase option, and I almost never sign up for subscription services, so I'm only using the free version.
... Right after signing up. Signing up is not worth figuring out if I want to sign up. Are there no 10-20 second samples I can listen to first, or am I missing something?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/85svjd/i_am_the_ceo_o...
I used it a couple of times before but it didn't work so well on me. Sometimes I tune to lofi streams on YouTube which work for me.
I don't pay any attention to their claims. The music works as stimulating, non distracting music without becomming monotonous.
If so...then I’m fine with that too. It helps me fall asleep on the sleep mode and it helps me focus on the focus mode.
Did monks have like a section of non-meditating monks playing wind instruments while they were in their practice? Seems implausible.