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Maybe others will relate? I'm not a headphone person but always have music playing in the background on speakers — often at a fairly low volume so it is easily ignored, talked over.

I find without the presence of external music I will have a song playing in my head instead. And generally the same song for hours (!). So I suppose the external click-track freezes up my mind somehow.

In case anyone cares, my "playlist" is local music I've purchased over the decades — maybe 4 or 5 days long? In my "lab" (man-cave, I suppose) I have a shorter, streamed playlist on the stereo that is looping over new music that I am currently "auditioning". The songs that make the cut are purchased and added eventually to the local playlist that plays elsewhere.

Study finds you enjoy doing things you like. If there's something you particularly like, you seem to enjoy it even more.

If you are missing on some form of pleasure in your life, substituting it for another pleasure can help alleviate the pain.

Woah.

"This study was funded in part by the International Coalition of Headphone Manufactures."

But seriously, "Music as a social surrogate"? How is this good? What we need is to fix the social structure, not find out ways to compensate for the miserable state we are in.

From https://www.utica.edu/college-community/utica-stories/fillin...

"In terms of social needs, we have a social fuel tank. This tank helps us understand if we are able to get to our destination—the destination being positive mental health outcomes, like feeling satisfied with our lives, having positive self-image, and feeling accepted by others. The problem is that past measures used in psychology research only tell us how much fuel is in the tank—not what types of fuel are in the tank, or how much of each type of fuel is in there.

In this study, the measure that I created helps researchers understand what types of fuel are in the tank, and how much of each type of fuel is in the tank, that is leading to those outcomes. It gives us a better idea of what is going on to help people get those positive outcomes."

Yeah but having a CHOICE in the music typically plays an important role! I mean in jail the only free option Tarrant County offered was Christian music (rap and contemporary) and that stuff was actually irritating to me. I wasn’t actively accessing it - I couldn’t NOT hear it coming through the ventilation system.

I wrote about how it’s a form of indoctrination to exploit people’s desire for something that they love yet only present a brainwashing oriented selection:

https://samhenrycliff.medium.com/tarrant-county-sheriff-bill...

If you want to know if this is for you, but you don't want to spend a lot of money, start with iems. It's quite the hobby, as well as education. It's very cheap and accessible to start off, while getting the full hi-fi music feeling. Of course, if you stick with it, it can get very expensive.

I wonder if the positive effect is also associated with a sense of autonomy and control of the environment.

Study shows people relying on studies for common sense found less adept at independent thinking

I wonder if it's a similar case with having tv shows running in the background? Music is often too stimulating for me but I like having the TV running in the background cycling through tv shows.

This is one of the cases I call reality mismatch:

Through evolution we have been programmed to associate music with security of the group being nearby. Now we can listen to music even though the group is very distant in time and space. Maybe it's not a complete reality mismatch because in a sense we are still close to the group through the Internet.

However the positive feelings are over exaggerated given the limited modern benefits.

https://somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/groovesalad is my well-being

This is a cynical take, but I’m increasingly becoming tired of studies like this. Is this is where our science funding is going? It’s clever, trite, and probably meaningless. I keep reading about the publish/perish problem in academia and how it encourages research that safe, slightly interesting, but not too interesting, and doesn’t move anything forward. This study seems to fit that criteria.

And since it’s behind a paywall, I can’t really determine the how the study was designed, how well powered it is, how they defined statistical significance, and exactly how they justify their conclusion. But it got clicks and comments, so I guess it served its purpose, only to be quickly forgotten in endless churn of popular science news.

I’m sad to say, I’m beginning to think that a lot of current science is bullshit. As a very pro-science person, this is very depressing.

I dunno, man, just from personal experience... I never went to raves back in the day, and only occasionally to clubs. With one exception I found the mobs of sweaty drunken (or otherwise intoxicated) people borderline intolerable. But sitting in my room with headphones on, blasting trance or other EDM... I feel swept up and part of something. It's also the best way for me to bro out lots of code, with that stuff pumping. It's like the rhythm provides guide-rails for my brain to keep it going a certain direction.

The one exception? I once saw Armin Van Buuren do one of his legendary hours-long sets. That man is like the Pied Piper. Whatever energy the floor had before he came on was amplified a hundredfold and I just danced and danced, people be damned.

The study found that for people who are lonely or sad, listening to music helped them.

Wow. How utterly expected.

Next, they will do studies and find that people who are lonely or sad, are helped when they attend a concert with their favorite band.

Or when they eat their favorite food.

"After two years of studies, we conclude that people who are feeling lonely or sad, eating their favorite food gives them a boost and feel better".

The metric that would be useful is "better" for how long?

I can't argue that I really enjoy music as my working background noise. Something else unique is I enjoy listening to TV shows, or more, "noise". I usually put on a simple TV show I've seen before that doesn't need a lot of attention (Friends, the Office, New Girl, Big Bang Theory), that creates that background noise. It's like white noise to me :)

Everybody here is missing the point of this article which is actually about the increasing need for "Social Surrogates" in our current times. Music is just one of them.

See Social Surrogates, Social Motivations, and Everyday Activities: The Case for a Strong, Subtle, and Sneaky Social Self - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00652...

My birds are much happier when music is playing. And they seem to have preferences over time. Like there are no predators around when the environment around them is noisy.

Just from personal experience, listening to music in the morning while I make my coffee is an essential part of my morning routing, to the point that I will be upset if I can't do it.

Confusing title, I thought there was something special in solo music, e.g. pieces for one piano or a single classical guitar

Another study that states obvious facts. Of course listening to music boosts your well-being, heck, doing anything you enjoy doing tends to do so.

Wonderful! I am increasingly drowning in debt, my career is a dead end thanks to AI, and my landlord is making my daily life a stressful misery, but I can listen to music on my headphones. Thanks science!

I really wanted to read the article and then comment "in mice!", but alas, they used humans.

is there any good app to know local music event?