overview: Most people prefer to fall asleep to quiet, slow music, but some people find it more relaxing to listen to familiar, energetic popular music.
sauce: PLOS
A new study identified several characteristics typical of sleep-related music, such as being quieter and slower than other music.
However, Spotify’s popular sleep music playlist also includes faster, louder, and more energetic tracks. Her Rebecca Jane Scarratt and her colleagues at Aarhus University (Denmark) publish these findings in her open access journal. pro swan January 18, 2023.
Many people say they listen to music to fall asleep, but it raises the question whether the music chosen for this purpose shares certain universal characteristics. There are limited studies on the characteristics of , and previous studies tended to be relatively small.
To better understand the characteristics of sleep music, Scarratt and colleagues analyzed 225,626 tracks from 985 sleep-related playlists on Spotify. They used Spotify’s API to compare the sleep track’s audio features to those of music from a dataset representing popular music.
This analysis showed that sleep music tended to be quieter and slower than other music. Also, lyrics are often absent and often feature acoustic instruments. found and identified six different subcategories.
Three subcategories, including ambient music, are consistent with typical features of sleep music.
However, the music in the other three subcategories was louder and had a higher degree of energy than the average sleep music. (with Khalid)” and included several popular songs.
The authors speculate that popular songs, despite their high energy, may help some people relax and sleep through familiarity. Further research is needed to identify the different reasons why people choose different music for sleep.
Overall, this study suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the music people choose to sleep with. The findings may aid in the future development of music-based strategies to help people sleep.
The authors add: Starting with energetic and good tempo music, a wide range of variations will be shown.
“This study can inform the clinical use of music and advance our understanding of how music is used to control human behavior in everyday life.”
About this sleep and music research news
author: Hannah Abdalla
sauce: PLOS
contact: Hannah Abdalla – PLOS
image: image is public domain
Original research: open access.
“Audio Features of Sleep Music: Universal and Subgroup Characteristics” by Kira Vibe Jespersen. pro swan
See also
overview
Audio features of sleep music: universal and subgroup characteristics
Throughout history, lullabies have been used to help children sleep. Today, with increasing access to recorded music, many people report listening to music as a tool to improve their sleep. I know very little about the customs of
In this study, we elucidated sleep-related music features by extracting audio features from a large number of tracks (N = 225,626) taken from the sleep playlist of the global streaming platform Spotify. Compared to music in general, sleep music was found to be softer and slower. It was more often instrumental (i.e. without lyrics) and performed with acoustic instruments.
However, sleep music had large variations and fell into six different subgroups. Surprisingly, three of the subgroups contained popular tracks that were faster, louder and more energetic than your average sleep music.
The findings reveal a previously unknown aspect of the audio function of sleep music and highlight individual differences in the choice of music used for sleep.
Using digital tracing, we were able to identify universal and subgroup characteristics of sleep music in our own global dataset, and advance our understanding of how humans use music to coordinate their behavior in everyday life. I was able to deepen it.
