Apple and Universal Music Announce 'Sound Therapy'

[MacRumors]

Apple and Universal Music Group today jointly introduced a new "Sound Therapy" collection of wellness playlists, consisting of popular songs with added sound waves or white noise to help listeners focus, relax, and sleep better.

Sound Therapy features three categories: Focus, Relax, and Sleep. The playlists include extended, instrumental, and reimagined versions of popular tracks from artists such as Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry, Kacey Musgraves, and others.

The playlists were crafted by a team of producers, scientists, and audio engineers at Sollos, a music-wellness venture within Universal Music Group.

Apple's announcement explains further:

Songs have been enhanced with auditory beats or colored noise to help encourage specific brain responses. Gamma waves and white noise — a whoosh-like combination of every sound frequency — may help with focusing; theta waves could aid in relaxation; and delta waves and pink noise — a deeper, gentler variation akin to rain or wind — might assist in achieving better sleep. A dreamy version of Katy Perry's "Double Rainbow," for example, could help listeners drift off to sleep, while an Imagine Dragons track might help them tackle a to-do list.

The playlists are powered by Universal's proprietary audio technologies, and they are backed by scientific research, according to Apple.

"Sound Therapy harnesses the power of sound waves, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science to help listeners relax or focus the mind," says Apple's announcement.

Sound Therapy is available exclusively on Apple Music.

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Article Link: Apple and Universal Music Announce 'Sound Therapy'

 

[antiprotest]

New New Age.

 

[poorcody]

I'm surprised they didn't credit Artificial Intelligence being involved.

 

[caliguy]

Technology ruining your sleep? Try this technology.

 

[JohnnyApple$eed]

Unless they have Pantera with Delta for sleep, I think I’ll pass.

 

[Rradcircless]

I love when apple just drops new features that aren't inside of a gigantic annual software update.

 

[ChittagongBoy]

While we keep waiting for the manual EQ function on the iPhone/iPad.

 

[The Clark]

I'm pretty happy with youtube rain sounds so I think I'll stick with those.

 

[Windoes]

Good night

 

[tennisproha]

This is useless without a sleep timer in Apple Music. The system-wide timer is not a workaround, it needs to be a built-in timer like the Podcasts app.

 

[Veinticinco]

"Songs have been enhanced with auditory beats or colored noise to help encourage specific brain responses."

aka...

Subliminal Messages in Music​

 

[MTWomg]

Wellness is a scam, a parody of health. Music is music. Medicine is medicine. May the two never meet.

 

[Eric_WVGG]

I think there's a possibility that this feature will affect your "music profile" in Apple Music.

My favorite source of music going back to the Beats Music days was the "new music mix" playlist that's curated based on your listening habits. It had my tastes down to a T — until I tried sleeping to this new feature a couple times. Now it seems to think I'm some kind of drip.

I did play the Lofi Girl mix a couple times, so I can't rule that out, but this night-and-day change in my suggestions is just awful.

 

[Rychiar]

I think there's a possibility that this feature will affect your "music profile" in Apple Music.

My favorite source of music going back to the Beats Music days was the "new music mix" playlist that's curated based on your listening habits. It had my tastes down to a T — until I tried sleeping to this new feature a couple times. Now it seems to think I'm some kind of drip.

I did play the Lofi Girl mix a couple times, so I can't rule that out, but this night-and-day change in my suggestions is just awful.

it definitely has ruined my year end Music list using delta waves for sleep...

 

[aloysiusfreeman]

Wellness is a scam, a parody of health. Music is music. Medicine is medicine. May the two never meet.

Someone didn't watch The Rehearsal and learn that Evanescence helped Sully Sullenberg land an airplane in the Hudson River

 

[TechWhisperer]

"Songs have been enhanced with auditory beats or colored noise to help encourage specific brain responses."

aka...

Subliminal Messages in Music​

Yeah if you reverse the track you can hear “I’m going to buy a new iPhone Pro Max because I need it” continuously.

 

[TechWhisperer]

Why not add this to the new Apple Ambient? Weird move. But I’m going try it nonetheless.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I think the wife and I are the only ones that don't charge our phones in the bedroom at night. We leave them in the kitchen.

 

[xmarcuswildx]

Can it come with a side of ketamine? That’s how it really works.

 

[randolorian]

Snake oil?

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

I need therapy every time i use the Apple Music Mac app

 

[dannys1]

I'd rather listen to white noise (or a variation of it) to go to sleep - with binaural beats - I do every night.

I can't fall asleep to music - as a producer it keeps me awake analysing sounds and structure, it can't just be background noise to me.

 

[dannys1]

I need therapy every time i use the Apple Music Mac app

I don't really understand the hate for it - it works really well for me. Enables me to upload all my custom songs and unreleased stuff to my Apple Music library and have them side by side with music in the Apple Music catalog.

The only thing I find a bit janky is the search when it doesn't very efficently swap between searching your own library or searching Apple Music. It can be clunky to switch and sometimes you get stuck levels deep and have to delete the search and start again, it needs work here - maybe use some AI to decide if it should search your own library or the AM one! Two search boxes seems a mess, I don't know the best way to do it - someone must be able to figure it out though.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Wellness is a scam, a parody of health. Music is music. Medicine is medicine. May the two never meet.

Music in medicine: Monsalve-Duarte, Sofia, et al. "Music therapy and music medicine interventions with adult burn patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis." Burns 48.3 (2022): 510-521.

Music and sleep: Wang, Chun-Fang, Ying-Li Sun, and Hong-Xin Zang. "Music therapy improves sleep quality in acute and chronic sleep disorders: A meta-analysis of 10 randomized studies." International journal of nursing studies 51.1 (2014): 51-62.

Chen, Chia‐Te, et al. "Effect of music therapy on improving sleep quality in older adults: A systematic review and meta‐analysis." Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 69.7 (2021): 1925-1932.

Music therapy and pain: Hauck, Michael, et al. "The influence of music and music therapy on pain-induced neuronal oscillations measured by magnetencephalography." Pain 154.4 (2013): 539-547.

The science behind music therapy decent. It's been looked at for decades, with the general consensus that it can be beneficial for at least some conditions. Music can be healing, at least emotionally.

I'm not sure if there are randomized clinical trials specifically supporting the general claims behind these playlists of music, but this isn't completely out there.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Snake oil?

There's decent scientific evidence to generally support the ideas (covered some in a comment: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-announce-sound-therapy.2457005/post-33902850).