FUELING THE TREND

Evidence that music is strong medicine—with more studies un-riddling its unique brain mechanisms ahead

Stringent meta-reviews show music’s eyeopening impact on depression anxiety and pain—and everything from its power to improve social skills in kids with autism to being a stronghold against Alzheimer’s, as memories of music don’t get lost to the disease. A key, recent focus has been more hospitals around the world using music therapy before surgery, as new studies like one from the University of Pennsylvania reveal that music is as powerful as a sedative in reducing patients’ anxiety.

More research is now untangling the brain mechanisms involved in listening to music and investigating the right dosages: The British Academy of Sound Therapy just found that 78 minutes daily is optimal for improving mental health. And there’s more research into evidence-based acoustic sound design: what frequencies (measured in hertz), decibels, beats, tones, etc. have the most powerful impact, and for what outcomes.

The potential of music therapy is so immense and untapped that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) just awarded $20 million to fund a Sound Health Initiative that will undertake studies to uncover music’s mechanisms of action in the brain, as well as to identify a host of new interventions, from treating symptoms of pain, PTSD, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, autism and dementia to music’s impact on childhood development. This is a huge step: serious money for serious science to understand music’s serious potential for improving human wellbeing.

Culture shift: Exhausted by screens, we’re taking sanctuary in sound

With the average person now spending 6.5 hours+ a day in front of screens — bombarded by bad news, endless work, and social media strutting—there’s a distinct shift underway: a retreat from visual/digital culture into music and sound. This flight into music is being led by millennials/Gen Z: A recent global Spotify survey of 15- to 37-year-olds found that one of the five defining traits of this young demographic is that they (56 percent reporting) “use audio as an escape from their screens,” and audio is a “huge part of their everyday lives.” It’s not just the kids:

You see the flight from visual to audio culture—from our exhausted eyes to our newly open ears—in the skyrocketing adoption of podcast-listening: Thirty-six percent of the world’s population has listened to podcasts in the last month You see it in new music listening centers, like the rise of cool, new “listening bars” that mix community and cocktails with big vinyl listening libraries, so huge in Toyko at places such as Baobob or Paper Moon, and spreading around the world to places such as Bar Shiru in Oakland, California, or Tokyo Record Bar in New York City. You see it in hot real estate trends, including the rise in “listening rooms,” a home space where meditation can be taken with music, and with predictions  that these wellness rooms loaded with state-of-the-art audio/ AV equipment are “the new home theaters.”

Stream your wellbeing: The music industry pivots to wellness

From an explosion of healing wellbeing playlists on the big streaming sites to new, big audiences for ambient and “New New Age” music to musical artists incorporating all kinds of wellness into their concerts, the mainstream music industry is experiencing a serious wellness transformation. “Wellness” is becoming a new mode of listening— beyond the artist or genre.

Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other streaming sites are increasingly serving up playlists that focus on mood-changing, stress-reducing, help-people-sleep, focus-enhancing, meditative, improve-your-workout music and soundscapes—making wellness music a core homepage channel. There are now endless loops of trance-y and tranquilizing music or channels for specific wellbeing intentions, and they boast millions of subscribers. Spotify is spawning “chill playlists” such as “Deep Focus,” “Peaceful Piano” and “Ambient Chill.”

Brand-new apps such as myndstream (from the founders of the entertainment group that made emotional music for shows such as Game of Thrones and House of Cards) create music to specifically drive daily wellbeing goals, with tracks for focus, meditation, movement, relaxation and sleep, that can be accessed on Spotify and Apple Music.

Both ambient and New Age music are finding big new audiences, as more people seek immersion in blissed-out sonic spaces and sound healing rather than power anthems or raps. NPR recently explored how ’60s/70s New Age music (once cringe-inducing for many, with its sounds of birdsong and ethereal synthesizers) is seeing a cool new wave of artists and approaches, such as Los Angeles’ Matthew David and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.

More artists are incorporating experiences that you would find at a wellness resort into their performances: artists such as Erykah Badu and bands such as Sigur Rós are having mass sound baths at their concerts, while Jhene Aiko’s recent concerts included guided meditations, sound baths, mantra-chanting and aromatherapy. The music + wellness festival just continues to surge. The behemoth music fests such as Latitude or Glastonbury keep adding more wellness areas/experiences, the latter recently featuring everything from indigenous spiritual elders to workshops on ayahuasca. In the future, we will see more live music meditation and full-blown “audio-wellness” festivals, such as Soft Landings planned by Morning Gloryville Founder, Samantha Moyo.