A bit of a tangent, but this sort of music actually makes it near impossible for me to concentrate.
Instead, I have what I call "loop songs", which are selected favourite tracks that span a range of genres from fairly heavy metal to Afrobeats. When I want to focus I pick a loop song and set it to repeat (the ideal volume varies per song, but is typically moderately loud). I can't explain how or why but it settles my brain far, far better than any white noise or "chill" playlist I've tried.
It's also a point of humour with my friends because they're horrified that I listen to the same song hundreds of times over a couple of days, while I'm perplexed that they can actually get tired of listening to a song to the point of disliking it.
That makes sense to me and I think it's the principle being mantras, repetition gets someone into a state of trance.
Although I don't know if I would be able to loop just one song, I do repeat albums that I like. So I put a few albums that I like and have listened to many, _many_ times, on queue. Already knowing the songs makes my brain settle (or at least reduces the cognitive(?) load a lot), and sometimes I even discovered "new sounds".
I have a very similar progress, but my favorite loop-genre to work with is grindcore. Highly recommend Magrudergrind: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB290E30AC7EEFAFB. I have listened to this album many hundreds of times by now.
Me too. It might be caused by the crackling sound, the dominant instruments being melodic instrument in midtones/treble, or the amount of highpass filter applied to the music. It might relate with the frequency you're comfortable with (for example, I'm not really comfortable with the frequency of typewriter or the voice of my project manager near deadline :p)
I do the same, but the reason, as I’ve thought about it, is that it is of course a song I like, with a nice groove, and when I press Repeat for hours, the effect is that whenever I have a momentary lull or break in my work, what I hear is a snippet of this music that I like, and I can groove with it for a second or a few minutes, it isn’t something new that will grab my attention away from my work. So it isn’t even background music because I’m not listening to it in the background. It is music to keep me on track when those brief lulls arrive (like waiting for something to compile, or upload, or render).
I do this sometimes with a single song, but I've found much more success with entire soundtracks from video games, especially Nintendo games, though mostly for nostalgia reasons. The different songs add just enough variety that I don't get bored, but usually the entire soundtrack has a consistent volume, style, and often mood. Plus these songs very rarely have any distracting vocals.
I'm musical in general, having grown up doing various band activities, so there's always a song playing upstairs. Having something external to listen to simply allows me to switch tracks.
Me too! I can't have it too loud though. But same song, on loop for an hour or so. I think the feeling of the headphones over my ears acts as an unconscious trigger to concentrate too.
I used to listen to Bach's Musical Offering when studying for my qualifying exams. I think the repetition of the main theme through the piece contributed to my focus
same! all about getting “in the zone”. I usually go for house/techno DJ mixes or some sort of cool drumming. lol tangent but you might like this digeridoo one... https://youtu.be/FHpTYVOWin4
I want to love this. I leave these stations on in the background anyway and being able to change them like a radio station is a desirable feature.
It's missing 2 key features that will prevent me from using it and recommending it to everyone I know:
1) No volume control. You could argue this is more a failure of my browser, but it's easier if you just add a volume control. Bonus points if up/down arrows controls work to control it. Really, all the youtube keyboard controls would be helpful here.
2) YouTube sometimes detects my bitrate incorrectly and I need to manually set it to highest. I don't know why this happens, but it does. Let me change that somehow on your site. Even if I have to opt-in to seeing a full youtube player to set it, that's ok.
I would also like a convenient way to get this on my TV. I wonder which android TV devices can install PWAs now.
It has volume control, you can skip songs, there are 4 different channels (Main, Rock, Mellow, Eclectic) and you can even make your own channel of songs that you rated 7 out of 10 or more.
No ads, purely listener supported. It has a phone app too where you can set bitrate per Wifi/Mobile data and you can also set up caching to listen when you're offline or during tunnels when travelling.
I'd have this open constantly if it had a pause button. Bonus points if there's a easy keyboard shortcut.
This kind of music increases my productivity enormously. Part of it is there's no lyrics and rhythm is interesting but steady. The other part is my brain associates this music with productive coding so it's easier to get into the zone.
the app needs a volume control. It's playing at the same loudness as the system's volume, which is not right for a background music app. It prevents you from listening to it while also listen to someone on a video call!
I'm also starting to really hate this direction in software design where all buttons are either flat with the UI or hidden through some cryptic menu or swipe gesture or even worse, they're unavailable to the user, all for the sake of simplicity.
If you were to teleport 2003 me into the present, I would have no idea how to use most front ends of today's websites or smartphones.
I wasn't referring to this website specifically but to an industry trend in general of removing basic controls for the sake of simplicity and clean GUIs.
In firefox, every tab has its own output stream. On a suitably advanced platform, you control the volume of each stream with a system tool, independently.
Yes but I shouldn't have to dig through my system settings to change the sound of a tab. Imagine youtube or VLC had no sound control and you'd have to change it in system settings individually.
I like the idea, and the app looks cool. I just wish there was a way to just get the audio streams from these channels and have the video constantly looping be embedded into the app or something.
The reason why I don't stay tuned to the YT channels is exactly because of ads, and I don't like my bandwidth being consumed by video when I'm not watching anything.
I'm curious - are there good adblockers today that can block YouTube ads? I vaguely remember uBlock Origin facing the problem of Google serving ads from the same domains/addresses as the actual video, making adblocking on YouTube virtually impossible.
I use uBlock Origin on Firefox and it seems to work fine for blocking YouTube ads (to the point where I frequently forget YouTube has ads until I make the mistake of trying to access it on a browser lacking an ad-blocker, lol).
uBlock Origin (even with default block lists) + Sponsorblock is what I use for a fully ad-free YouTube experience. Sponsorblock is a crowd-sourced native sponsor-content timeskipper. For medium to large channels it works like a charm. I highly recommend this setup.
I mean, that's standard fare these days, but going on YT with an ad blocker just to ensure a smooth, immersive music listening experience seems so... roundabout.
Also, I prefer to keep the ad blockers off when I'm on the site just to support those who I want to support, and I'm not on it for most of the time.
I had to implement something similar to this a few years ago. I scoured the ToS to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong by removing the GUI. IIRC it was totally fine as long as you still link to the youtube video.
As for ads -- I don't remember how we dealt with those. I don't think embeds show the pre-roll ads, only mid-video ads. Since this is a streaming video I assume it doesn't have those.
I was going to link the site I used it on, but it looks like since I worked there they switched to Youtube's controls rather than the custom ones I implemented; not sure why.
What does it mean that members of society have evolved to constantly need audible stimulation? I feel like there has to be some sort of mental effect from listening to music constantly.
I don't have an answer for you, just wanted to pile on with my own experience and questions in the same vein.
I find that a background noise app really helps me stay calm/lowers stress and anxiety, and I get a huge productivity boost out of it. Something about being at peace hearing natural sounds really does feel like it's deeply engrained in me, and I assume other people also. I wonder: (1) if there's a difference between the effects people generally get from various noise types (lofi, natural sounds, white noise etc), (2) whether something relevant about the individual correlates with preference among these, and (3) what is universal among these that makes background noise so commonly helpful.
(I use Noice for free nature/background sounds, off f-droid. I highly recommend it)
Tried noice, uninstalled since it would stay open in the background, even though i closed it. Display used 36%, Noice used 11% of power! Was open for 36 minutes, ran 1:3X:XX.
I think the difference between music and background music makes sense here.
I use this this kind of background music as a way to drown other noises, because it's easily canceled by the brain.
It's basically a nicer white noise, better than silence because it allows me to ignore much better the noises around.
So for the 'need' for audible stimulation, it's actually the opposite : you cancel as much as possible the stimulation by having a constant and easily filterable input that drowns the unexpected noises that could be stimulating/break your focus
I think this is a valid question worth asking. As we dive further into the age of constant electronic activity and people preach digital detoxes, lament the loss of "deep work", and wax on about dopamine, it's good to consider all areas in which we've allowed such stimuli to pervade every part of our daily lives.
Certainly, people can point out that constant audible stimulation dates back to at least the radio craze near the beginning of the 20th century. So that gives us a place to start researching comparisons on the effect on attention spans and other aspects of human cognition.
I find the idea of needing music very interesting. I never really feel that I need music. Like, I can enjoy movie and game soundtracks, and I feel like they add to the atmosphere. But when working, I have no problems working and focusing in silence. I don't need background music, and I don't need to hear the radio playing. I actually prefer silence. But I've noticed many people consider silence very uncomfortable. I think silence is associated with boredom, and boredom is something people would rather avoid.
Well I don't constantly need it, but there's certainly stretches of time where I want something for my ears to focus on, leaving the rest of my mind to focus on something else.
And selecting music I actually want to listen to is counterproductive - as is scrolling through playlists and youtube channels finding the "right thing" to put on and forget about.
I suppose it depends on what definition of effect is in play.
To me it's like asking "is there an effect to seeing all the time?" or "is there an effect to listening to people speak Korean?" or "is there an effect to touching things?". Sure, there are second and third-order effects of using your senses - for example "looking" at an article will ideally cause you to learn something new - but our eyes and ears in particular evolved to be open practically all the time, and most music falls squarely within the non-injurious range of auditory stimuli.
They have the radios on Spotify, your smart tv probably has an app for that.
If you mean the video part, wouldn’t it be a bit distracting? Still, I think webos-based TVs (LG) have a webkit browser that might be able to handle it. Edit: nope, they are not. Sadface.jpg
The tiny drop shadow on the text looks really good.
I enjoy a most of the music in this genre. But a lot of the tracks use effects that makes me nauseous, heavy stereo panning and some sort of woomwoom feeling sound (is this "ducking"?).
Makes it impossible for me to listen with headphones. Bearable on low volume on laptop speakers.
I don't know if it's just my Chrome browser but this website doesn't load at all for me and just hangs on a black screen. The only relevant extension I have is uBlock and uMatrix.
I'm looking for almost this, except I don't want music, I would like the white noise of people in a public space where don't speak english. Any recommendations?
Just the kick/low-end drum beats, or all of the rhythm (only leaving the melody)? Just curious. Sometimes I listen to relaxing music or videos on headphones when I can't sleep and I use the EQ on my phone to cut low frequencies. If it's all of the drum/rhythm that distracts you I don't know of a good solution other than finding music that's all melody and no rhythm.
Just the most distinct ones. I'm not agains drums or anything like that (hell, I usually code with heave metal in my headphones), but it's one thing when it's part of the picture and a whole different thing when the music goes like this:
____..__._A_.___.___
Where A is the beat.
I'll try to do something using EQ (never though about this option for some reason)
Instead, I have what I call "loop songs", which are selected favourite tracks that span a range of genres from fairly heavy metal to Afrobeats. When I want to focus I pick a loop song and set it to repeat (the ideal volume varies per song, but is typically moderately loud). I can't explain how or why but it settles my brain far, far better than any white noise or "chill" playlist I've tried.
It's also a point of humour with my friends because they're horrified that I listen to the same song hundreds of times over a couple of days, while I'm perplexed that they can actually get tired of listening to a song to the point of disliking it.