--- title: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health? description: Are there health benefits to music? Yes, it turns out: music can boost your mood, reduce stress and even improve sleep. canonical: https://time.com/5254381/listening-to-music-health-benefits/ author: Markham Heid article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-04-26T14:12:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:49:04.200Z article:section: Health og:title: You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health? og:description: "Music activates nearly every region of brain we’ve mapped so far." og:url: https://time.com/5254381/listening-to-music-health-benefits/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3eb98522a2985db/69892eaa8fd2ee6bda35b6c2/listening-to-music-headphones.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 7952 og:image:height: 4473 og:image:alt: listening-to-music-headphones og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health? twitter:description: "Music activates nearly every region of brain we’ve mapped so far." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3eb98522a2985db/69892eaa8fd2ee6bda35b6c2/listening-to-music-headphones.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You Asked: Is Listening to Music Good For Your Health? > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: This Is The Music That Pumps Team USA Up [Watch (HLS stream): This Is The Music That Pumps Team USA Up](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jJNjcmtf.m3u8) (1:34)  _Published 2018-02-14. This Music Pumps Team USA Up_ by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Apr 26, 2018 2:12 PM UTC  pink headphone isolate on blue background. pink headphone isolate on blue background. Getty Images by [Markham Heid](https://time.com/author/markham-heid/) ## Markham Heid Markham Heid is a contributor at TIME. He is the author of The Habit Trap, due out in early 2027. Apr 26, 2018 2:12 PM UTC If you’re looking for an easy way to transform your mood, cue the music. Studies have shown that music can buoy your mood and fend off depression. It can also improve blood flow in ways similar [to statins](http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/118/Suppl%5F18/S%5F1148.2.short), lower your levels [of stress-related hormones like cortisol](https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1196/annals.1284.045) and [ease pain](https://academic.oup.com/jmt/article-abstract/53/4/430/2348275?redirectedFrom=fulltext). Listening to music before an operation can even [improve post-surgery outcomes](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23740695). How can music do so much good? Music seems to “selectively activate” neurochemical systems and brain structures associated with positive mood, emotion regulation, attention and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes, says Kim Innes, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health. Innes coauthored [a 2016 study](https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad151106) that found music-listening could boost mood and well-being and improve stress-related measures in older adults suffering from cognitive decline. Her study compared the benefits of music to those of [meditation](http://time.com/collection/guide-to-happiness/4645363/mindfulness-meditation-stress-anxiety-resilience/)—a practice in vogue for its mental-health perks. She found that both practices were linked to significant improvements in mood and sleep quality. “Both meditation and music listening are potentially powerful tools for improving overall health and well-being,” Innes says. If the idea of listening to music seems a lot more practicable to you than meditating, these findings are great news. But music can also agitate and unsettle, experts have learned. “Silence can be better than random listening,” says Joanne Loewy, an associate professor and director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music & Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York. “Some of our data show that putting on any old music can actually induce a stressful response.” (Just turn on the creepy themes from films like _Halloween_ or _The Shining_ if you need examples of how music can fan the flames of anxiety, rather than squelch them.) Along with inducing stress, Loewy says, the wrong music can promote rumination or other unhelpful mental states. One [2015 study from Finland](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4549560/) found that music can bolster negative emotions—like anger, aggression or sadness—much the same way it can counteract these feelings. Why? The rhythm and other characteristics of the songs we select can modulate our heart rates and the activity of our brain’s neural networks, explains Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology who researches the cognitive neuroscience of music at McGill University in Canada. Tracks with a slow tempo, gradual chord progressions and drawn-out notes tend to be calming, Levitin says, while chaotic and up-tempo music tends to have the opposite effect. But all of this is subjective. Levitin says he’s encountered people who have said that AC/DC is their relaxation music. “These were people who normally listened to Swedish speed metal, so to them AC/DC was soothing,” he says. “There’s no one piece of music that will do the same thing for everyone.” There’s also no single “music center” in the brain, he says. “One thing people find surprising is that music activates nearly every region of brain we’ve mapped so far.” This hints at music’s universality and power to affect us. If you’re looking to use music to de-stress, pump yourself up or otherwise shift your mental or emotional state, Levitin says you probably already have a bank of songs you can pull from that you know will have the appropriate effect. Dive in. Just be sure to set aside distractions. “We fool ourselves into thinking we can do two things at once,” he says. While listening to inspirational music can help you exercise harder or longer, calm music won’t help you unwind if you’re listening to it while you’re scrolling through your news or social feeds, he says. To cultivate an even deeper connection between music and your health, consider a field called music therapy, which focuses on using music to improve patient outcomes. “Music therapy starts with the idea that, as therapists, we’re collaborating with a person who’s looking to help themselves to feel more complete or optimistic—or to discover parts of themselves they aren’t aware of—using music,” says Alan Turry, managing director of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University. Music therapy can take many forms. One is “guided imagery in music,” Turry says, where a trained therapist helps a person uncover her strengths or challenges by listening to music the patient chooses. “A feeling of \[therapist-patient\] attunement can happen with music,” he says. “Sharing music helps the patient feel like the therapist ‘really gets me.’ ” Other forms of music therapy may involve singing or playing instruments. “The way each of us makes music can reveal something about us that a therapist can work with,” he says. “Someone might play a drum in only one tempo or one dynamic, and that may represent their difficulty in being flexible in other areas of their life.” “Music is a way to bypass our rational side and to get in touch with the emotional life we often keep hidden,” Turry says. “If people are having trouble, there’s usually a way that music can help.” ## Transcript My number one song that pumps me out is 9 Piece by Lil Wayne, Rick Ross. I'm a huge rap fan. It depends on what I'm really into. Right now I'm really liking [ UNKNOWN ] album so I've been dreaming [ UNKNOWN ] to that but who knows what I'll be listening to next month. Any type of hiphop rap. Recently, Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do. [ LAUGH ] Carly Rae Jepsen's Cut To The Feeling. DMX's X Gon' Give It To Ya Start barking a little bit. It really gets the blood flowing. I really don't try to pump myself up at all before I compete. I try to be as calm and relaxed as I possibly can, and I listen to a very strange mix of music. But a lot of old school, classic rock. I'm going to have to go with Miley Cyrus " Party in the USA ". USA cuz I mean, USA themed. Hip hop, a lot of hip hop. One song in particular, Mob Deep, Shook Ones, just really upbeat. I like Nickelback. I actually don't really listen to music before I compete. I like to hear my surroundings and be in the moment, I guess. Right now I'm I'm into Cypress Hill and they have a song called Ain't Goin' Out Like That. I think one that I've kind of listened to the most is Pursuit of Happiness and it's the remix with Steve Aoki. Ordinary Day by Great Big Sea. Wake Me Up, Avichi. I typically listen to 90's alternative. I love electronic dance music, so I'd definitely have some EDM on the play list. I'm gonna kinda just twist the question a little bit, but after the games, we listen to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, just cuz it's a lighthearted song, and it's usually after a victory. 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