Why Does Music Feel So Good?

Why Does Music Feel So Good?(phenomena.nationalgeographic.com)

104 points by jkat 13 years ago | 50 comments

rlu 13 years ago |

Somewhat tangential, somewhat related: people listen to music a lot, and yet the great majority of people do so with their stock iPod earbuds - or cheap alternatives.

I don't like to consider myself an Audiophile (and I really don't think I would classify as one anyways) but I don't understand why people are okay with paying hundreds of dollars (sometimes over $1,000) on HD TVs and yet stick with free headphones or cheap speakers. I personally think I listen to music more than I watch TV shows or movies - and I reckon this is true for many others as well. Why don't other people spend money on good sound equipment to have a better listening experience?

For example, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD600s which MSRP at about $400 I think. My friends find this ridiculous. I also have a $100 amp and a $70 DAC. So I've spend almost $600 on this audio equipment. I bought these 2.5 years ago and don't plan on replacing them any time soon (definitely content with what I have).

I don't really expect my friends to immediately plunge into what I have ($600) but they could try out a more 'beginner' pair like Sennheiser HD 555s which cost like $120.

$120 is, I think, more than reasonable for the sound difference you'd get using those headphones. Those are what I had prior to my HD 600s for close to five years and then decided I wanted to try something even better.

I suppose some of my friends HAVE spent ~$100 on Beats headphones, though this just makes me sad as they're complete crap compared to other headphones you could get for $100.

I dunno. I'm not trying to sound like I'm ranting but I do find it interesting that so many people find it wasteful to spend money on audio equipment when they spend so much time listening to music.

coldtea 13 years ago | |

>I don't like to consider myself an Audiophile (and I really don't think I would classify as one anyways) but I don't understand why people are okay with paying hundreds of dollars (sometimes over $1,000) on HD TVs and yet stick with free headphones or cheap speakers.

I cannot understand this myself. I mean, why pay thousands of dollars for HD TVs, period.

As for the cheap headphones part, who cares. They like the beat and the feeling of the music, not the details and the subtlety of the recording.

That's why they don't listen to jazz or classical that much.

What exactly musical subtlety do you miss on Justin Bieber, Metallica, Hip Hop, Skillrex, 99% of what passes for R&B today etc, by using cheap headphones? You'll miss some low-fi sampled, bit-crushed drum loops? Two-note synth motifs?

lobster_johnson 13 years ago | | |

> I mean, why pay hundreds of dollars for HD TVs, period.

Can you get a good HD TV for less than "hundreds of dollars" (not sure where the limit is, $199?) that is any good, though?

Sure, there are cheap TVs. The cheapest LED TV in the 40-44 range on Amazon is $349, and it's some cheap no-name brand I have never heard of. It's probably not very good.

Of course, most people probably don't know much about what differentiates TV quality. I frequently see people watch horribly badly calibrated TVs (with things like motion smoothing turned on), and I frequently see people watch non-widescreen broadcasts stretched to 16:9. Whenever I ask, they say they don't see any difference, and some people even get upset when I offer to fix the settings.

GuiA 13 years ago | | |

> I mean, why pay hundreds of dollars for HD TVs, period.

Because you can't find HD TVs that cost under "hundreds of dollars"? :D

I don't watch TV that much, and bought a cheap 32" LCD for some videogaming + developing interactive applications for which I need a large screen, and had to pay ~$350 for it.

fredsted 13 years ago | |

People have different interests. I know someone who spends thousands of dollars on coffee and coffee equipment. I think that's ridiculous. I think it's a cool hobby though.

It sucks that your friends make you feel bad for things you enjoy!

The new Apple Earpods are acceptable though (compared to the Sennheiser 429 I own which are too big to wear in public).

j2bax 13 years ago | | |

I agree, I find the new Apple Earpods to be a very enjoyable listening experience. I recently picked up a pair of $100.00 on ear Sony's and I have all but retired them as they make my ears really hot and the Earpods actually give me a much more balanced sound. I'm a musician of most of my life, but definitely not an audiophile. I'd like to be an audiophile someday...

rlu 13 years ago | | |

Haha, well to be fair..they don't make me feel bad. It was just an observation

purplelobster 13 years ago | |

As someone who doesn't care much about audio quality I can try to explain. Part of it I suppose is that even though I like music, I don't _like_ like music as some people seem to do, like music is their life and a huge spare time interest. I just like to listen to some stuff sometimes, but sometimes I can go a week without listening to my Spotify account or the radio. Another part of it is that I feel like I get most of the benefit already with "regular" ear-phones, I don't need super duper audio quality to enjoy a song. The song is in your brain anyway, and your perceptions are not as perfect as you think. Think of it like suspension of disbelief in a video game. I used to play games with really shitty graphics, but that didn't affect the way I enjoyed the game because my brain fills in the rest.

codemac 13 years ago | |

You don't hear a difference when listening to music that is produced and edited with an assumption of crappy audio equipment. Many people have entire playlists of songs that they'll stream at 96kbps over shitty free headphones. 96kbps over 600$ of equipment wont change much.

sliverstorm 13 years ago | |

IMO, people just don't see the increase in performance to be worth the increase in price.

Now, something like the Sony MDR-7506 has an excellent performance-vs-price ratio, but many people want to stuff their headphones in their pocket when they aren't using them, and it is hard to find the same performance-vs-price ratio for earbuds.

Personally, I'm at roughly the same spot as you. I have a DAC and amp, and two pairs of nice Senns.

HyprMusic 13 years ago | |

I think the problem is perception. We're so used to coloured sound that without over exaggerated bass and treble, higher quality headphones feel very flat. I will admit myself, that I much prefer my consumer speakers (Cambridge Soundworks Air Minx 200) to my friend's studio monitor speakers (KRK Rokits I think) - despite being well aware that they're no doubt coloured.

marssaxman 13 years ago | | |

There is definitely a habituation effect. I bought a pair of KRK Rokits a few years ago and got used to listening to everything through them - I bought a second pair for my living room, and virtually all music I hear now comes through one of the pairs of monitors or through a pair of Sennheiser HD 280 headphones. It sounds normal and sound played back on a stereo with an unbalanced EQ setup sounds... odd, like it's trying too hard.

mumrah 13 years ago | |

Even the low end Sennheisers (like the HD202 on my head) offer a much better experience than earbuds. At 27 USD on Amazon, there's not much excuse for people who scoff at expensive audiophile headphones.

gdsimoes 13 years ago | |

I completely agree with you. My friends love my expensive headphones but refuse to buy one. And I really think they value the quality of their music.

JonnieCache 13 years ago |

My largely uninformed guess: Music is so massively rewarding because it trains/fuzzes our pattern matching engines, in a particularly effective and advantageous way that cannot be found "in nature". This is the same reason why jokes/humour are so enormously valued by the brain.

It also explains why only nerds like listening to breakcore.

sageikosa 13 years ago | |

I got to watch Udo Dirkschneider (from U.D.O. and Accept) live on his North American tour last week in Poughkeepsie, NY. One thing I realized about him (apart from the obvious fact his voice is perfect for heavy metal even at age 61), is that he really enjoys listening to the other musicians (the rest of the band!) he has on stage with him, and he has hand motions that show he is following and anticipating the music in his head.

brador 13 years ago | |

Or it might be because the beats and repetition help synchronize brain sectors. Allowing refined, less fuzzy, thinking.

GuiA 13 years ago | | |

Sorry for my potential utter ignorance, but this sounds a lot like woowoo.

Do you have any source that refers to such a thing as "synchronization of brain sectors" that leads to "refined, less fuzzy thinking"?

quesebifurcan 13 years ago | |

I think Steven Pinker would agree: "...music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties" (How the Mind Works, p.534).

Recoil42 13 years ago | | |

This is a cute description of what it does, but it doesn't really explain the why or how.

lukifer 13 years ago |

I recently read a piece that I feel explains the phenomenon quite well [1]. In short: we evolved rhythmic music as a defense mechanism, to unify the tribe into acting a large meta-organism for the purpose of aggression displays against predators and other tribes. As with a lot of other social behavior, it feels good to be part of something larger than yourself, and music connects us emotionally, physically and rhythmically to one another.

This may not tell the whole story, but I believe it's a strong component, particularly given the historical relationship between religion and music.

[1]: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/

saddino 13 years ago |

There have been several pieces (from classical to classic rock) that have actually caused me to break out in tears. Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points. Amazingly, this is reproducible, but the severity of the effect depends on my mood. After reading this, my best guess is that this is tied to an especially intense release of dopamine. My maternal grandfather shared this peculiarity and both of us have had awkward moments where we try to explain that we are quite OK -- "it was just the music" (an explanation often met with puzzled expressions).

bane 13 years ago | |

It's called Frisson (I have it also)

There used to be a great Wikipedia page on it, but the deletionists got to it at some point and turned it into this content free page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chill

There's a slowly growing body of studies into it.

There's also a reddit devoted to it http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson but I've found that what causes one person to frisson doesn't necessarily cause another.

This book has a bit on it http://books.google.com/books?id=uyI_Cb8olkMC&lpg=PR5...

anoncow 13 years ago | |

> Amazingly, this is reproducible

I have sobbed to so many shitty movies, that I have lost count.

thomseddon 13 years ago |

The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music?

I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway!

(Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)

hobs 13 years ago |

I like how an undergraduate neuroscientist takes the same approach I would to learning about the brain. Throw that fucker in Google.

willismichael 13 years ago | |

No! Please don't waste yet another super genius on an advertising company.

xnxn 13 years ago | | |

The fucker being referred to here is the research topic, not the neuroscientist:

> After Salimpoor had the car epiphany, she rushed home to her computer and Googled “music and the brain.”

dougk16 13 years ago |

Read "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel Levitin.

Some interesting points/arguments that I remember from reading it several years ago:

- In many languages, the word "sing" is the same as the word "dance".

- It's relatively recently in our history that the majority of people have become only listeners of music, instead of creators.

- As humans evolved, one's ability to sing, dance, and play instruments well displayed good physical, intellectual, and emotional health to the opposite sex, and so gave you an evolutionary edge.

- Something about how even the most non-musically-inclined people can extract the beat from a song better than a computer and repeat it later perfectly (memory is hazy on this one...I'm probably saying something stupid here).

That's all I remember for now...references are in the book of course. Very good read.

louischatriot 13 years ago |

People like to guess a pattern (i.e. "from the first 5 secs I think the song will go like this and I'll like it") and like when they're right. That's also why we tend to like more songs we've already heard several times (even though we didn't like them a lot in the beginning).

Summary of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/516bfd54649fcf9e0a000de0/why-does-music...

shaydoc 13 years ago |

Interesting reading. I have always loved music, pretty much anything. I just wonder if our genetics and DNA plays a large part in this. I often observe my little daughter's reaction to music, and its truly amazing to see how she will spontaneously smile and dance when a really good piece of music comes on. First time I really noticed big time was when the opening bars of Bruce Hornsby's "The way it is" came on the radio, she just loved it :-)

I wonder if we all get beginners templates of what we will like via our gene pool :-)

meritt 13 years ago |

Someone needs to put together a Spotify playlist of these 60 songs.

kafkaesque 13 years ago | |

I put a Spotify playlist together but only found 56 songs.

There were more than one version of a few songs, and I couldn't cross-reference the audio on the researcher's site. I'll do it tonight, unless anyone gets to it before I.

meritt 13 years ago | | |

Link to playlist? :)

anoncow 13 years ago | |

Or a grooveshark playlist.

breakupapp 13 years ago | | |

Soundcloud + rdio are much better than grooveshark now. I can barely use grooveshark. I think it's dying.

zwieback 13 years ago |

Thank you! Updating my Spotify list now. I was looking for tips from SXSW but am tired of whiny indie rock, this works much better.

Just noticed #4 swapped artist and title.

trustfundbaby 13 years ago |

I thought this was a closely related article that got more into the actual science behind our predilection for music http://www.mcgill.ca/channels/news/why-we-buy-music-225868

randomdata 13 years ago |

While there may be no scientific basis, I do like the explanation I read on another site: Mating calls. While we can certainly form relationships without music, music does often seem to play a large role in our mating processes.

breakupapp 13 years ago |

playing music also makes you feel a lot better