I dislike the sensationalization in the article ("Put down the banjo, Timmy"). The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. But it goes on to say that the study talks about looking at a wide range of studies and stating that quality studies compare music learning with control groups that do other types of activities, like sports.

You don't really need a PhD in psychology to figure out that any activity that involves putting effort over long periods of time will yield _some_ sort of result. Whether that actually translates directly to hyper-specific measurements (e.g. school math grades) as opposed to only "soft" long-term changes in behavior (e.g. developing an interest in the relationship between music and math, leading to e.g. an interest in software engineering over medicine, or an increased interest in arts, or whatever) seems to me like asking the wrong question.

Both music and intelligence are incredibly multidimensional. Trying to narrowly define a supposed correlation between two very narrow aspects of both might be a disservice to the idea of the development of a well rounded individual. I feel that many people take these sorts of soundbite titles to heart as if they were little life hacks to "get ahead", rather than thinking about life as a holistic experience.