A Scientific Reason Why Music Is So Addictive

As Philip Dorrell pointed out in his 2005 bookWhat is Music? Solving a Scientific Mystery, music acts on our emotions and feelings. My good friends know that I describe myself as a ‘music obsessive’ and have written many articles about my own passion for listening to and collecting music . One of the proudest moments of my life was getting a populist article on ‘music addiction’ published inRecord Collector, my favorite magazine . There is a very specific reason humans find music so appealing. As explained in this video, listening to music causes the brain to release the same chemical as it would with the use of certain types of illicit drugs.

If you only had few seconds to spend with someone would you rather take a picture or be in the moment and exchange feelings and emotions? In today’s world, it’s easy to lose your train of thought and become spectator of your own life, but really remember life has so much more to offer from what we can see from a picture or a movie. Gaia just finished playing one of the most incredible set I’ve heard in a long time.

According to a recent Nielsen study, 40 percent of Americans claim 75 percent of music spending. This group of super-fans also indicate that they are willing to spend more.

A determined effort to block the song out may result in the very opposite of what you want. Called “ironic process” and studied extensively by psychologist Daniel Wegner, resisting the song may make your brain keep playing it over and over again. Jason Blume is the author of 6 Steps to Songwriting Success, This Business of Songwriting, and Inside Songwriting .

It is concluded that since memory is powerfully affected by repetition that this could be a significant contributing factor to catchiness, though certainly not the only aspect. A song's catchiness may also be due to the auditory "slave system" of our inner ear, much like the visual slave system of our "mind's eye." Music has an amazing ability to work its way into our survival mechanisms. We know that there is a lot of it coursing around in your brain when you do cocaine, amphetamine and those kinds of drugs. But they have wildly different effects—or so I've heard from people that do them. The breath a vocalist takes as they sing a line is crucial to creating a sing-along-able tune. The longer a vocal in one breath, the more likely we are to sing along.Freddie Mercury possessed all the necessary frontman skills to write and perform a “catchy” song.

Based on the small empirical literature and anecdotal evidence, Dr. Ahrends hypothesized that music practice has the potential to be addictive and carried out an exploratory empirical study. A total of 25 musicians were recruited from German conservatories. She went on to argue that the concept of music practice addiction is a promising concept for further research and “may have implications for the understanding of mental health problems in musicians”. In aprevious blogthat I wrote seven years ago, I looked at the concept of ‘music addiction’.

Sure, making memorable and catchy music involves trial and error, but with the above 8 strategies, you’ll have a much higher chance of making something that gets stuck in someone’s head. Structuring your song logically, having clearly defined sections and proper flow, all combine to make your song more catchy. It’s easier for the listener to remember the arrangement. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to memorability, a song with a unique twist is going to stand out among the rest and stay ingrained in people’s minds. A lot of us shy away from incorporating other genres and styles into our music. We think that listeners won’t appreciate it, the song won’t flow, or it’s just too weird. Of course you can, because A) as mentioned above, I’ve kept exactly to the rhythm and melody in each case, and B) you knew that I’d changed it and were automatically listening for the original melody.

The bridge may also portray a revelation or an emotion significantly different than the rest of the song. For example, you leave your house and get into your car. The verse is like driving slowly down a neighborhood street. The pre-chorus is like driving on a boulevard where you accelerate more. And then the chorus is like fully accelerating on the highway.

I’ve started putting together a new playlist with songs mentioned by the artists and academics I spoke with. I haven’t road-tested it yet, but plan to this weekend. I looked back at a Spotify playlist I made of my daughter’s favorite songs. I learned that they might enjoy kid-friendly classics as much as their early-millennial dad. Corin Tucker, of punk-rock stalwarts Sleater-Kinney, mentioned a beloved TV theme song. “I would go back to my own childhood, and find things like ‘Scooby-Doo’ that I loved, and play that for the kids, to make sure they have a bit of that in their brains somewhere,” she told me. She also introduced them to favorites like Patti Smith, hitet e reja shqip 2021 Kate Bush and Talking Heads.