Listening to music is good and there is a close relationship between music and psyche. Headphones, streaming, programs and apps have greatly facilitated the use of songs with smartphones and computers: how do the benefits change with the different listening modes?
Thanks to the new systems of musical enjoyment and streaming, listening to music is an activity that we all, more or less consciously, do at any time of the day. In the last fifty years we have not only gone from analogue to digital, but technological evolution has totally changed the way we use it and how we use it. Background music, soundtracks and songs streaming on the smartphone chase us everywhere.
In listening to music, it is not only what matters, but also how you listen. In the days of vinyl the sound source was two large stereo speakers in plain sight in the living room, today they are tiny bluetooth headphones in the ears. There are those who have started listening to songs on 45 rpm record players, have experienced the evolution of music media including vinyl, CDs, cassettes, mp3s and streaming. Today, however, children and adolescents naturally live the digital age with a smartphone in their hand and headphones in their ears. How have the power and function of listening changed?
Listening to music is good for you
Everyone knows that listening to music is a pleasure and this simply explains why it is good for the health of the body and mind. Whether you consider it as a source of fulfillment and relaxation, or an energizing and exciting stimulus able to soothe pain, a sad or happy song can change our day, affect our mood and mood. In short, make us feel better.
Listening to music is so good that music therapy uses harmonies, melodies and rhythms in a conscious way to increase psychological well-being and defeat pathologies, discomforts, diseases or reduce pain. But without delving into medical issues, we all know how listening can keep us more focused and active by improving memory in study or work. A sound can be a stimulus to meditation to defeat stress, anxiety and depression, or help us sleep better or even lose weight.
The relationship between music and psyche is testified by numerous studies. It is also supported by a certain school of psychoanalysts that through the world of the seven notes the territories of the imagination and the unknown are also explored. The Jungian analyst Augusto Romano put his reflections in the book Musica e psiche in the libraries for Cortina Editore. The relationship between music and the unconscious can have therapeutic properties. If a world without music is unimaginable, the purpose of the book is to stimulate us to listen better.
Anti-stress music effect
A lot of research has been done on the benefits of listening to music for fighting stress and maintaining good mental and physical health. Songs can help prevent heart disease, strokes or in music therapy facilitate the movements of patients with neurological disorders. But they can also improve performance in sports and even increase milk production by cows.
In support of this thesis, the University of Pavia in collaboration with the University of Oxford also carried out an experiment on 24 young volunteers who were monitored with different physiological aspects such as breathing and circulation, before, during and after listening. The test provided that each participant was made to listen to pieces of pieces from the different musical genre in random order.
From Raga (Indian classical music), to classical (Beethoven, Vivaldi) passing from pop (Red Hot Chili Peppers), techno music and even dodecaphonic music. It turned out that songs with slower rhythms and pauses are true anti-stress music. In particular, the most striking effect is obtained on those who have already played an instrument for at least seven years. Evidently more sensitive and educated to sounds, unlike the others who had not received any kind of musical education.
More relaxing song
If one of the benefits of listening to music is to ward off anxiety and stress, a group of neuroscientists from Mindlab International asked themselves which was the best anti-stress song. To induce a stressful feeling, participants were made to solve a puzzle while measuring blood pressure, breathing, brain activity and heart rate with different musical backgrounds.
Just as there are musical backgrounds that favor concentration in study and work, the best anti-stress song in the end turned out to be the song entitled Weightless , by the English trio Marconi Union. This instrumental song according to the researchers can reduce anxiety and feelings of fear by as much as 65%. The only contraindication is that it induces sleepiness, so it is better not to listen to it during a car trip, where vice versa to drive safely there are recommended playlists.
Music and heart health
In addition to the psyche, the benefits of listening to music are also on a physiological level and in particular on the heart. Pop, rock, rap, jazz or classical, it doesn’t matter the musical genre or whether you do it alone or in company. Half an hour a day of enjoying music can reduce the risk of heart disease. A recent study carried out by the University of Nis in Serbia discovered how passive listening to favorite music improves the internal surface of blood and lymphatic vessels, i.e. the heart.
There is no ideal genre to listen to , but you should choose a background capable of increasing positive emotions and relaxation. The best thing is something that makes you dance, walk briskly, run, or do any aerobic activity. A three-week test with heart disease patients shows that 30 minutes of exercise and listening to favorite music per day are enough to improve heart function by 39%. Improvements are also obtained with only physical exercise (29%) and with music (19%). A good reason to give a good pair of headphones to those looking to keep fit, especially the elderly.
In particular, the benefits of listening to classical music on the cardiovascular system emerged in a study presented at the New Orleans meeting of the American Society of Hypertension. The experiment, conducted on 48 patients between the ages of 45 and 70, was based on listening to half an hour of classical, Celtic or Indian music a day, simultaneously with light physical exercise. In just one month of music therapy, the improvements in blood pressure were evident.
Another research conducted by the Ruhr University in Bochum in Germany and published in the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt, found that listening to the works of Mozart and Strauss for 25 minutes a day not only lowers heart rate and blood pressure, but reduces also the concentration of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood. In particular, Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor would seem to produce the best effects for those suffering from hypertension.
Listening to music by yourself
You can listen to music alone or with others: the experience is completely different, both qualitatively and emotionally. In solitude, you can focus more on what you hear. Listening with other people is a matter of personal identity, it means sharing an experience as social beings with those who understand our musical tastes. The relationship between songs and personalities also identifies us online, but more as consumers. The effect can only be disruptive for children and adolescents where the relationship between music and emotions comes even before that between music and personality.
The fashion of listening to music with headphones began with Sony’s Walkman cassette players a few decades ago, passed through iPods and has now landed on smartphones. With the wire gone, the tiny bluetooth headphones that stick in your ears are left. Spotify and all the streaming services go out of their way to explain how to share and recommend songs and playlists to friends with a click, but listening to streaming music in 80% of cases means putting on a pair of headphones and isolating yourself from the world.
The wireless headphones are all very light, weigh about 5 grams, slip into the ear canal by plugging it with a silicone rubber that allows you to acoustically isolate yourself from external noise. In addition, in these sophisticated models of headphones you can activate an automatic noise cancellation system that works thanks to special microphones and algorithms that analyze the surrounding sounds, generating a sound contrary to the ambient one. Among the most coveted wireless models are the Apple Airpods, the Samsung Galaxy Buds, the Huawei FreeBuds and finally the Sony Wf1000 with prices ranging from around 150 euros up to almost 300 euros.
Listening to songs with children
Despite the growing popularity of streaming as a new music standard, there are people who like to listen to music in a slower, more accurate and perhaps shared way. Nostalgia has little to do with the recent rediscovery of vinyl. The strength of music is also to create empathy among those who listen to it. In the family, it could play an important role in establishing communication channels between parents and children. The reason is explained by a research carried out on young people of 21 years of age edited by the communications department of the University of Arizona and published in the Journal of family communication.
The boys were asked how they perceived their current relationship with their parents, along with a number of other questions that included how music was heard in their homes, particularly between 8 and 14 years of age. The results leave no doubt. Researchers found that boys and girls who shared musical experiences with parents in childhood and even more so in adolescence, have better relationships with moms and dads in adulthood.
Singing lullabies to young children has important effects on their cognitive development, but it is not enough. To build good relationships with children, you need to listen to music together, play an instrument and take your children to concerts even later, in adolescence. This does not mean having the certainty that everything will be fine and that there will be perfect harmony between mothers, fathers and children when they grow up. But it is certainly a way to start sharing a path.
Better music or silence?
In reality, if we consider the physiological aspects, the beneficial effect of music is always greater than silence. The studies are quite in agreement, there are no precise musical genres, everyone must listen to the music he loves. However, it has been established that the slow rhythms and pauses of the songs are able to induce a greater sense of inner calm with evident consequences on health. This is why the great classical music composers are to be preferred.
It is not new, but rather a confirmation that human well-being is based on the balance between body and mind. The disconnect between these two elements is the cause of many problems. Having a strong aesthetic sense and cultivating a passion for art and good music certainly help to recover some of the harmony lost in everyday life. Inner peace and harmony have a lot to do with our health. This is why man should also learn to distinguish between good and bad music.
Songs and young relationships
The importance of listening to music becomes fundamental in young adolescents who are always willing to share everything and on social networks they spend hours posting dreams and aspirations, but not only. When it comes to sexuality, boys and girls all over the world show a lot of ignorance and too much confidence. For what are the reasons? Certainly the models conveyed by media, TV, newspapers, web and cinema count, but also by music. According to an in-depth study carried out some time ago by Pittsburgh University, there is a close correlation between youthful sexuality and music listened to.
In the study carried out on boys between the ages of 14 and 16, it was found that those who listen to songs of a sexual nature or that contain explicit phrases in the text are twice as likely as their peers to have sex, without distinction between males and females. Communication gaps in the family are therefore filled by the media, often in a distorted way with the risk that sexuality will also be experienced in a cheerful and carefree way, without any mention of any health dangers or unwanted pregnancies. According to the researchers, the children most influenced by music were not adequately followed by their parents.
For experts in the family it is necessary to talk about everything, without embarrassment and once again listening to music with the children is very important. After reaching 750,000 unwanted teenage pregnancies, in America it seems that the age of the first time is moving forward, however. Revenge of chastity? It is too early to say, but according to the results of a study carried out by the US government on risky behaviors, since 1991 the number of adolescents (13-17 years) having a sexual activity has steadily decreased. If in 1991 54.1% of boys had already had sexual intercourse, today the percentage is 41.2%: 43% of males and 39% of females.
Software for listening to music
At the time of streaming that offers songs practically for free, do you still need programs to listen to music ? By now we all have many devices such as computers, PCs, smartphones, tablets, notebooks always connected to the network and to each other. Yet it might still be useful to be able to use simple software or apps to manage audio files, edit them or create playlists. Usually these music applications are already installed on smartphones and PCs, but you may want more listening options and ways to organize and edit audio and mp3 files downloaded from the internet.
With a PC it is very simple not only to listen to music but also to perform editing operations. That’s why we made this short guide with some software that can still be useful for those who follow a more traditional way of listening to mp3s, want to download songs, manage and edit audio and video files downloaded from the web, or watch streaming movies online.
Windows Media Player The latest version of the Windows media player for every free software platform that supports many audio file formats including the well known mp3 format. It is already included in the operating system and also supports listening to the radio
iTunes It is certainly among the most used free programs for listening to music. Designed specifically for all models of iPod, iPhone and iPad, this player allows you to listen to music in mp3 format with your Windows or Mac computer as well as modify numerous parameters of the songs. You can also purchase songs from the iTunes Store catalog, manage photos and videos, and subscribe to Apple’s streaming services.
WinAmp Software Player widely used for a large number of audio formats. It offers many customizable options to modify, for example, the equalization or the appearance of the interface through which to perform the various editing operations. In addition to being an mp3 player, it offers native support for audio and video encoding and many other services, such as buying concert tickets, finding song lyrics and downloading music directly online.
Listen to music on YouTube
Youtube music is the greatest source of videos and songs for all fans and enthusiasts looking for the songs of the most famous artists. Downloading mp3 is not allowed but you can legally stream music. The most viewed videos of all time now reach billions of clicks from users all over the world, but the service is used daily by millions of fans around the world to listen to songs and possibly download them.
Listening to free music with Youtube is very simple and perfectly legal. Not for nothing has it become the most used website in the world for those looking for and listening to songs. An online service more used than Spotify and Apple Music too. These are staggering numbers: 1.3 billion people, well over Spotify’s 100 million or Apple Music’s 30 million. According to the most recent data, 46% of surfers who connect to the internet use it to search for streaming content.
Music videos , but also single songs and entire albums uploaded by users with just a cover as a video, accounted for around 50% of all visits. For this YouTube has entered into agreements with SIAE and with other national companies that manage the rights of authors and publishers by donating a lump sum on the basis of clicks. Respect for copyright is guaranteed by an automatic Content ID system that immediately detects if a video is not original by comparing it with a huge database.