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Comment by JamesCoyne | Hacker News Reader

$7/month for AI arranged pieces of human written music.

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

https://www1.brain.fm/assets/pdfs/EEGSleepAnalysis.pdf

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Hi James

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...

They do not seem to actually cite a paper for their claims, but I do wonder whether they use an active baseline for control group (i.e. music that is not theirs) rather than a passive baseline (no music). For myself, I wonder if Bach would do just as well for focus.

I've been using them on and off for a while and I have found the focus mode quite good. If anything sometimes it's too good, I almost feel wired like when I've drank too much coffee, but it has helped me when I need to get stuck into something that I'm procrastinating on.

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.

Worth the price in your mind?

It's hard to say if it was worth the price. I purchased a lifetime subscription a while back at a discounted rate. I'm not sure if this a product that I would pay for monthly perpetually though.

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.

I think the key words here are "with some effort". Ultimately anything is potentially worth the price depending on the amount of effort a person is willing to dedicate to solving something vs having it "solved" for them.

I use them a coupla' times a week and find the focus mode quite good.

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!

> As someone mentioned below, I could put together a Spotify list but why?

Because I already pay for spotify?

Hi 'Code

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.

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