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Jul 21, 2025

Research Confirms: Spiritune Improves Mood and Performance In 10 Minutes Or Less

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When Pablo Ripollés, PhD, the associate director of New York University’s Music and Auditory Research Laboratory, first learned of Spiritune’s work to share music that could modify mood, he was skeptical. “We are always skeptical,” Ripollés says of himself and his colleagues. “We’re scientists; that’s our job.”

So, as any good researchers would do, they came up with an objective study design that would put the platform to the test. They compared Spiritune to other forms of music, measuring their impacts on mood and cognition using the precision of the scientific method.

After nearly four years of work, the resulting randomized controlled study, Effects of Music Advertised to Support Focus on Mood and Processing Speed, was just published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One. Let’s peek behind the curtain to learn how this research came together, what it found, and why it’s so significant for the field of music medicine.

Measuring music’s impact on mood

For this study, healthy adults across the U.S. were asked to listen to one of four types of audio for 10 minutes:

A Spiritune “Work Flow” track: Composed to take listeners from feeling anxious to feeling energized
Spotify’s “Deep Focus” playlist: A popular collection of light, ethereal, ambient songs
Popular music: Songs (with lyrics) from Billboard’s Hot 100
Office noise: A simulation of the background sounds in a typical office environment

Due to COVID restrictions (this research started back in 2021), participants listened virtually instead of coming into the lab. Before they pressed play, they took a mental health assessment survey, and then answered survey questions about their positive and negative affect to estimate their mood heading into the listening session.

In the middle of the ten minutes, they completed a “flanker task”—a common research test that measures attention and cognitive processing speed.

Once the audio stopped, participants took the survey again to see if their mood had changed over the ten minutes. They also answered questions about whether they enjoyed the music they had listened to.

After analyzing the results, Ripollés and his co-authors found that listening to Spiritune’s Work Flow music increased positive affect (e.g., feelings of strength, enthusiasm, and determination) and decreased negative affect (e.g., feelings of stress, anxiety, and irritation) significantly more than office noise and the other forms of music that were tested.

In fact, Spiritune’s Work Flow music was the only music to significantly improve mood, he explains, and 76% of listeners experienced either an increase in positive affect, a decrease in negative affect, or a combination of both after listening to it. The Spiritune Work Flow group also completed the cognitive test faster, without losing any accuracy, whereas the other forms of music either slowed task performance over time or had no effect.

Unpacking the findings

Ripollés wasn’t necessarily surprised that lyrical pop music didn’t improve mood or cognitive speed in this study. He explains that people have different preferences when it comes to these songs, and Daniel Bowling, Ph.D.— the neuroscience advisor at Spiritune, incoming assistant professor at Stanford School of Medicine and a co-author of the research—adds that distracting lyrics can be “like poison” when you’re trying to focus (at least if the work you're doing involves language processing).

However, Ripollés expected the Spotify Deep Focus playlist—which has been saved over 4.75 million times—to have more of an impact. “This is a popular playlist for a reason,” he’d figured. “People like it and people use it.” In the end, although participants rated this music positively, they didn’t experience any significant mood or cognitive changes after listening to it.

Bowling theorizes that this has to do with Deep Focus tracks’ acoustic structure. They are relatively simple sonically and they don’t have much rhythm. They’re designed to be pleasing to listen to, but their benefits might start and end there. “There are all these playlists online that claim to support focus, attention, or task performance but there’s really not even a whiff of logic behind how they do this,” he says.

The Spiritune Work Flow track, on the other hand, was methodically designed to promote energy and focus using a slightly faster tempo and more groove (which, in musicology, describes the extent to which music makes you want to dance or move). These elements seem to drive the track’s ability to both improve mood and speed up performance, but more research is needed to be sure.

"What we think is happening is this music is likable so it’s making people feel better and also it’s keeping people engaged because it has this groove,” Ripollés says. “We think it’s a combination of these two things but we need more data.”

While preliminary, this research underscores a critical point: not all therapeutic music is created equal. The scientific and clinical construction of music can make all the difference in its ability to improve mood and maximize productivity. Jamie Pabst, founder of Spiritune, says “this study validates what we’ve always believed in: music needs to be purposefully created, scientifically grounded, and clinically tested to truly impact mental health. Spiritune music is intentionally designed using key features that science has shown to be effective for emotion and cognition, and this study demonstrates what's possible when music, science and technology combine in an intentionally therapeutic way. Spiritune represents the next frontier in mental health interventions by turning music into medicine.”

The future of science-backed music medicine

We’ve all had the experience of sitting at a computer, eyes glazed over, struggling to complete a monotonous task. Music may help us power through these moments more quickly and feel better as we do it, this new study suggests. However, not just any song or playlist will do the trick: Music that’s specifically designed to support on-task functioning, like Spiritune, will likely be most effective.

Bowling notes that, in an age when the medical field is struggling to curb the growing mental health crisis, music can serve as an accessible, low-cost, and highly effective alternative therapy. He envisions a world in which everybody has access to tracks that are scientifically shown to help them reach specific goals—be it breaking out of a negative thought pattern or focusing at work.

“It will take time to get there,” he says, “but this research definitely takes us a step closer.”

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A day-by-day recap

October was a busy month for me, with lots of travel, work deadlines, and commitments that shook up my usual routine. At the outset of this experiment, I tried to map out the specific ways that I could use Spiritune most effectively each day.

It was a little overwhelming to plan this out ahead of time, but then I realized I didn’t have to: The beauty of the app is that it can be used to meet the moment. I could simply open the app up any time I felt overwhelm, anxiety, distraction, or any other less-than-desireable sensation and it would play me a track designed to quickly carry me towards how I wanted to feel. Equipped with this freedom, I started my two-week listening spree. Here are snippets from each day:

Day 1: Winding down on the road. I’m traveling for work, and I always find it extra hard to shut my brain off to go to sleep when I’m away from home. Tonight I’ve also been working late on my computer, so my mind is especially active. I put on a ‘Tense to Relax’ track and start to get ready for bed. The tune starts with heavy acoustics then gradually becomes more smooth and melodic. As it does, I find that I naturally sync my breath up to the music, elongating my inhales and exhales and dropping my shoulders a bit. As the track winds down after seven minutes or so, I’m ready to put my phone down. I’m getting sleepy.
Day 2: Exercise motivation. I’m feeling lethargic after a long work day, but I want to get a quick run in. The ‘Peaceful to Energized’ flow starts with sounds that remind me of a relaxing spa. I get on the treadmill and start walking to the beat. As the tempo gets more decisive and determined, I pick up my pace and soon I’m in a jog.
Day 3: Transitioning into work mode. I head back home this morning and need to go into work mode quickly once I arrive. Getting into the groove of work right after traveling doesn’t come easily for me, so I pop on a ‘Lethargic to Energetic’ track to coax my mind into deep focus mode.
Day 4: Morning mood turnaround. I’ve always thought that the phrase “woke up on the wrong side of the bed” was silly, but this morning, it makes sense. I slept through my alarm, feel daunted by my to-do list, and just want to crawl back in bed. I play the ‘Frustrated to Excited’ track called “A Smile at Dawn” and it quickly becomes one of my favorites on the app: The music is ethereal, groovy, and really pleasant, like a gentle trance. It captures the energy of a new day, starting sleepily and gradually building intensity and rhythm. As it plays on my walk to the office, I think about all I have to be grateful for.
Day 5: Getting in the groove of focused work. Today’s goal is to lock in to writing a big story. I put on a work-focused Spiritune track in the background as I do: a nice, upbeat alternative to the white noise I usually write to.
Day 6: Walking with presence. I’m in a great mood today, so I’m just looking for music to help me further embrace the moment. I head out to take a walk in the glorious fall weather with an ‘Energetic to Joyful’ track in my headphones. While I usually listen to music with lyrics on my walks, the instrumental music is less distracting and it makes it easier to fully take in my surroundings and tune into my other senses: the sun on my skin, the sights of the season’s changing colors, and the sounds of New York City.
Day 7: Staying steady through the 3pm lull. The afternoon slump has been hitting me hard lately, and I’m looking for ways to get through it that don’t involve reaching for yet more caffeine. Today, all of the words in the dense document I’m reading blur into one jumble and I find myself getting stuck on the same paragraph over and over. I play a ‘Lethargic to Energetic’ track, which begins softly and then has a really quick pickup; just the fresh burst of energy I need to re-engage with the task at hand.
Day 8: Going from irritable to appreciative. I’m antsy and rushing to get chores done around my apartment—not necessarily the most exciting way to spend time, but a ‘Bored to Peaceful’ track helps it go by a little bit faster.
Day 9: Falling asleep in a new place. I always miss my own bed when I’m away, and find unfamiliar spaces—no matter how comfortable—to be filled with distractions that keep me awake. This time, while traveling to visit family, I turn on one of Spiritune’s dedicated Sleep tracks as I’m trying to doze off. These longer tracks begin with 5-10 minutes of soft music then gradually transition into white noise. The soft chimes at the start of the track lull me to close my eyes, and I barely make it to the second part of the track before drifting off to sleep.
Day 10: Transitioning into the weekend. Friday evening has arrived! But once I shut down my computer, the work thoughts don’t necessarily turn off with it. I’m looking for help taking my mind off work so I can be fully present with my family for the start of the weekend. While a cocktail would usually be my relaxing tool of choice, I try a Spiritune track instead and it turns out to be a side-effect free way to transition the mind from one mode to another.
Day 11: Drowning out airport sounds. Why do flight delays always seem to happen in the most chaotic of airports? I have three hours to wait for my plane and I’m exhausted, but the screaming children and phone conversations around me are ruining any chance of a nap. I try to drown them out with a ‘Frustrated to Chill’ track and while it’s not quite immersive enough to make me fall asleep, it does help me relax and de-stress enough to see that extra time in an airport is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Day 12: Breaking up with the snooze button. My propensity to hit the snooze button over and over (and over) in the morning is one of my most deeply ingrained bad habits. Today I tried forcing myself to play a Spiritune Waking Up track after my first alarm went off instead. I did find that it helped me wake up in a timely fashion, the building melody acting like a jump cable for my sleepy brain.
Day 13: Starting the day more alert. As soon as I’m out of bed today, I immediately turn on Spiritune to play in the background as I do my morning routine. While I’m typically groggy and out of it for the first part of my day, the music helps me jump into things faster—and it’s not too cloying or energetic for my 7am brain to handle.
Day 14: Repeating the greatest hits. For the final day of my experiment, I took a victory lap and repeated some of my favorite use cases for Spiritune I’d gathered over the course of the two weeks. More on those below.

The results

Looking back on the last few weeks, I can see that Spiritune was most helpful for me during moments of transition. It carried me between leisure mode and work mode and back with ease, helped gently steer my mind from an active to a resting state, and made the first moments waking up from sleep a little less terrible.

Reviewing my notes from this little experiment shows me that a lot of the lowpoints of my day happen during these in-between moments. While it’s tempting to reach for vices like caffeine, alcohol, or social media to push through them, Spiritune is a side-effect free tool I’ll now confidently turn to instead.

Here are some of the ways I’ll definitely be using the app moving forward:

When navigating transition moments in the workday: Spiritune’s tracks helped me hop from one type of task to another, re-focusing on work after meetings or appointments, and switch my brain into relaxation mode after a long workday.
When winding down in a new place: It can be hard for me to wind down and sleep while traveling, but Spiritune’s tracks helped me find comfort in the unfamiliar.
When trying to relax in a high-stress environment: The next time I’m stuck in a loud airport or crowded area, you can bet that a calming Spiritune track will be playing in my headphones.
When waking up in the morning: I’m still tinkering with the best way to incorporate Spiritune into my morning routine, but knowing that it can help me break my reliance on the snooze button feels like a huge unlock.

And even in instances when Spiritune didn’t work as well for me (it probably won’t be replacing my gym pump-up playlist or the white noise I listen to when doing deep work), the app still prompted me to name my emotions throughout the day—a valuable exercise in its own right.

Try it for yourself

This was clearly an n-of-1 trial, and everyone will have their own experience when using music therapeutically. Your favorite ways to use Spiritune may be completely different than mine depending on your lifestyle, routine, and mindset. So, I encourage you to try this experiment for yourself, and let us know the results!

Like what you're reading? Sign up for Spiritune’s newsletter to get a monthly music therapy download straight to your inbox. Haven’t tried Spiritune yet? Download it today with a free trial!

Oct 1, 2026

From 1 to 100, Here are the Benefits of Listening to Music at Any Age

Music is a medicine with no age minimum or maximum. Here’s how to get the most out of it during every stage of life:

Few therapies are side-effect-free, affordable, and effective for all ages. Music is one of them. From supporting learning and development during childhood to combating mental decline in older adulthood, engaging with therapeutic tracks like Spiritune’s comes with proven benefits at every point of the lifespan. Here’s a through-the-ages guide to bringing music medicine into your routine and those of your loved ones.

Babies and toddlers:

From the moment you are born (and maybe even before), your body responds to musical stimuli. Research on newborns shows that they are able to not just track rhythms, but anticipate where they’re headed next, and music has been shown to have a therapeutic effect on babies who spend their first weeks of life in intensive care units.

It’s no wonder that parents, across cultures and over centuries, have sung lullabies to relax and connect with their children. It turns out that these melodies promote bonding down to a chemical level. “There's this rich connection that develops between a mother and infant through oxytocin,” says Daniel Bowling, Ph.D., Spiritune's Scientific Co-Founder and Director or the Stanfor Music, Brain & Health Lab. Lullabies seem to go a long way in promoting trust and letting kids know they are safe and cared for, ultimately benefiting their learning and development later in life.

Tips for this age:

Sing or play lullabies for babies before bed to promote bonding and trust, and if you're breastfeeding you can play music then too.

Keep music on in the background while your baby or toddler is playing

Children:

As children get older, music remains an essential developmental companion. There’s some overlap in the regions of the brain responsible for musical processing and emotional processing, and research on 3- to 12-year-olds has found that music can help strengthen emotional intelligence, academic performance, and prosocial skills—while reducing anxiety and depression. A study in Nature Reviews Neuroscience summarizes music’s importance to growing children in saying: “Akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness.”

Learning how to play an instrument when you’re young seems to support brain health in yet more ways. Children with musical training tend to have better verbal memory, reading ability, and executive function, leading a group of Swiss researchers to conclude that “the advice for parents and educators is clear: promote instrumental training in early childhood, as it may result in life-long advantages.” Starting by the time kids are 5- to 7-years-old seems to be a sweet spot for neural development, their study suggests.

Tips for this age:

Invite your child to choose music that matches their mood in order to help them explore their emotions
If your child shows interest in music, encourage them to take up an instrument

Adolescents:

During teenage years, you start to form more personal relationships with music. You may gravitate towards certain genres over others and get a better sense of the types of songs you like and don’t like. And the music you engage with during this time plays an outsize role in shaping your musical taste for life.

As teenagers gain independence, they can start to be more intentional about the types of songs they listen to and when. They may benefit from beginning to play around with using music to reach certain goals—be it to reduce stress at school or quiet the mind before bed.

Partner spotlight: Spiritune x Yale University

Through our partnership with Yale University’s The Good Life Center, we offer students a free Spiritune subscription they can use to access therapeutic music throughout the school year. “Many have shared that Spiritune has noticeably improved their ability to concentrate and manage stress while studying,” Bethel Asomaning, The Good Life Center’s Director of Programming, says. Learn more about the program and its early results here.

Tips for this age:

If you’re the parent of a teen, try leading by example and playing music to match the mood and energy of certain times of day
Encourage musical exploration so teens can pinpoint their particular tastes along with using functional music for specific needs like studying, calming nerves and more.

Adults:

Music can help you manage work to-dos, family responsibilities, and other joys of adulting with a bit more energy and focus.

Some of the most popular ways that adults in our community use Spiritune include getting into the zone at work, starting the morning energized, and going from anxious to chill. Music can help fulfill all of these goals, in part because of the way that the body tends to “sync up” with the sounds around it. For example, listening to high-arousal music that has faster tempos and more complex rhythms can be helpful for snapping out of morning fatigue, while soft, smooth, slower tracks can help impart a sense of calm.

When it comes to goal-oriented music, research suggests that listening to tracks that match up with your current mood or physical state and then gradually transition into your desired state tends to be the most effective. This is why all of Spiritune’s tracks are composed to take listeners on a sonic journey from one type of sound—and one type of state—to another, quickly and easily.

“I've been using [Spiritune] for a week during the workday to help me focus on tasks, and it has been incredible. Feels like a total mind hack, in a good way... I like the interface that lets you choose how you're feeling and where you want to end up,” reads one review. Learn more about the process our composers use to produce effective therapeutic tracks here.

Tips for this age:

Listen to music that matches the way you want to feel while going about your day (Spiritune makes this super easy!)
If you’re choosing music for focus and productivity at work, minimize distracting elements like lyrics, overlapping instruments, and key changes (again, Spiritune does this for you.)

Older adults:

As you get older, many of music’s more clinical benefits come into sharper focus. For example, a growing body of research has shown that listening to music can be an effective way to relieve pain, both chronic and acute. “When you’re listening to pleasurable music, there’s a release of dopamine and serotonin, which gives you a pleasurable feeling. That ends up diminishing the pain experience,” says Concetta Tomaino, DA, Spiritune’s music therapy advisor.

Music is also closely tied to memory, making it an ally for later-in-life cognition. Listening to familiar songs activates the emotion- and memory-processing regions of the brain, evoking powerful autobiographical memories and potentially helping to ease or delay cognitive declines. Research has shown that music interventions can improve cognition in those without existing cognitive impairment, as well as serve to ease symptoms of disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer's disease.

Tips for this age:

Listen to playlists that correspond to certain times of your youth to elicit positive memories
Work with a music therapist for a more clinically guided approach to memory care

No matter your age, or the age of your loved ones, Spiritune is designed to help you feel better, focus better, and relax more easily with the help of music. Sign up for our newsletter to get a monthly music therapy download straight to your inbox. New to Spiritune? Download the app today with a free trial!

Sep 3, 2026

An Inside Look at How Spiritune Tracks Get Made

Here’s how Spiritune’s team of composers, scientists, and curators makes the therapeutic soundtracks you’ll find on our app.

Every Spiritune soundtrack takes listeners on a sonic journey from one emotion to the next. But before that can happen, each track goes through a journey of its own—one that travels through the realms of scientific research, smart technology, and artistic creativity. Here’s a look into the step-by-step process we use to create new music for our app.

Step 1: Set a strong foundation

To understand how our music is made, you need to travel back to the earliest days of Spiritune. In 2016, our founder and CEO Jamie Pabst assembled a team of neuroscience, music therapy, and composition experts to explore a central question: Is it possible to write a formula for music that delivers genuine therapeutic value?

In search of an answer, our team identified the main emotions that people tend to feel throughout the day. To keep ourselves organized and grounded, we created what’s known as a “two-dimensional affect plot”—a graphical representation of mental states with axes for emotions (moving from negative to positive) and energy (moving from low to high). This left us with four quadrants: high energy and negative emotion, high energy and positive emotion, low energy and negative emotion, and low energy and positive emotion.

From there, we plotted the most common emotions into their respective buckets: ‘Determined,’ ‘energized,’ and ‘joyful’ belonged in the high-energy and positive-emotion quadrant, for example, while ‘anxious,’ ‘frustrated,’ and ‘angry’ were more high-energy but negative-emotion. We also considered the times of day when emotional and cognitive support are most needed: When waking up, working, winding down, and getting to sleep.

Putting all of this information together, we came up with roughly 30 therapeutic journeys that people might want to take throughout their day—be it lethargic to energetic in the morning or anxious to relaxed at night.

“And then it came to, well, what are the things that need to go into our music tracks to compose for these types of therapeutic goals?” says Pabst.

By leveraging musical elements like rhythm, pitch, melody, and harmony, our team was able to create briefs (or “sonic recipes,” as we call them) that serve as the foundation for creating music tracks that would successfully carry listeners along on these journeys. “That’s still the core of how we think about composing,” says Pabst.

While the Spiritune team has tweaked and tightened these recipes a bit over time, the same fundamental process is still used to make every new track on our platform.

Step 2: Follow the recipe, with a twist

Utilizing the sonic recipes, we then turn to our network of 30 or so composers to turn it into a science-based soundtrack.

A composer will use the sonic recipe we give them as a jumping-off point, but they’ll add their own artistic spin during the composition process. This means that the same brief can be executed many different ways, depending on the composer producing it. “I love the mix of one part standardization and science, and one part human creativity,” says Pabst.

We decide which types of briefs to give composers next using listener feedback and app data. For example, if we see that many ‘Hearted’ tracks in the Spiritune app have a strong drum beat, we’ll request that composers use percussion or high-groove elements in their compositions. And if lots of listeners are seeking anxious-to-chill at work journeys, we’ll compose more tracks for that category. We also constantly reference new research in neuroscience and music therapy to ensure our parameters match up with the latest science.

Step 3: Review the track

Once a composer is done with a first draft of a new track, they’ll pass it to our team for review. We use a combination of human and machine learning to ensure the audio fulfills the sonic brief requirements.

When Spiritune first got started, back before AI was what it is today, we trained a computer model to analyze the energy and emotion of our audio tracks. Through this methodology, we are able to assign the music composition a score based on how well the music features match the intended emotional states (i.e., anxious to chill). The really cool thing is that it assigns a score for every three seconds of music as the track evolves, so we can monitor how tracks move through our emotional affect plot in real time.

While this digital tool is impressive, it can’t replace the ear of a trained musician or an expert with scientific know-how. So we also put new tracks through a human editorial review. Members of our music editorial team—which includes neuroscientist Daniel Bowling, Ph.D., music therapist Concetta Tomaino, and a few other music curators—will listen to it and judge for themselves how it evokes the intended emotional response. Using these two layers of oversight, we’ll decide whether a track is ready to publish or if further drafts are needed.

In some cases, tracks go through several iterations before you can press play on them. But in general, the more composers work with us, the better they get at nailing the brief quickly and successfully. “We're always saying that Spiritune tracks just keep getting better and better,” says Pabst. “It's not necessarily that our science is changing. It’s that composers, over time, become more naturally attuned to what we're trying to accomplish and they develop, evolve and perfect their creative process accordingly.”

Step 4: Share a finished product that moves you—and your mood

Every time you open the Spiritune app, you have access to our expansive music library, with new tracks typically added multiple times a week.

Once you choose your current mood state and your desired mood state, the app will serve up a playlist of tracks that have been conceptualized, composed, and refined to help you make that transition quickly.

While each track offers a different listening experience, they all use standardized elements like groove and rhythm to serve a functional and science-backed purpose. And they’re all designed to be accessible to a wide variety of listeners. You won’t find any genre-specific music like hardcore rock or synth-heavy EDM on the platform; our tracks are genre-agnostic to please a broad range of musical tastes.

“The music is written to be broadly accessible. It’s simple, it's repetitive, it has a structure that's easy to learn and anticipate,” says Bowling, our neuroscience advisor. It also leverages groove in a way that is “directly associated with reward stimulation and the fun and enjoyment of music.”

Carolyn Divone, Senior Director at Crunch Fitness, one of Spiritune’s clients, says “Spiritune is a game-changer for me personally, and it was a no-brainer to bring this to the Crunch Fitness community. It ties into our more recent focus on mental health, and I love the neuroscience focus of how the music is created, and it really works. This is a big value-add to Crunch employees and members nationwide, and more recently Spiritune has been a perfect fit for our new Relax and Recover spaces - allowing members to immediately relax after a hard workout.”

And there you have it! That’s the process we use to compose music that is clinically shown to move you—and your mood.

Oct 28, 2026

This 2-Week Spiritune Experiment Changed the Way I Listen to Music

Here’s what happened when one writer set out to broaden her musical horizons by listening to Spiritune tracks once a day for two weeks.

A day-by-day recap

Day 1: Winding down on the road. I’m traveling for work, and I always find it extra hard to shut my brain off to go to sleep when I’m away from home. Tonight I’ve also been working late on my computer, so my mind is especially active. I put on a ‘Tense to Relax’ track and start to get ready for bed. The tune starts with heavy acoustics then gradually becomes more smooth and melodic. As it does, I find that I naturally sync my breath up to the music, elongating my inhales and exhales and dropping my shoulders a bit. As the track winds down after seven minutes or so, I’m ready to put my phone down. I’m getting sleepy.
Day 2: Exercise motivation. I’m feeling lethargic after a long work day, but I want to get a quick run in. The ‘Peaceful to Energized’ flow starts with sounds that remind me of a relaxing spa. I get on the treadmill and start walking to the beat. As the tempo gets more decisive and determined, I pick up my pace and soon I’m in a jog.
Day 3: Transitioning into work mode. I head back home this morning and need to go into work mode quickly once I arrive. Getting into the groove of work right after traveling doesn’t come easily for me, so I pop on a ‘Lethargic to Energetic’ track to coax my mind into deep focus mode.
Day 4: Morning mood turnaround. I’ve always thought that the phrase “woke up on the wrong side of the bed” was silly, but this morning, it makes sense. I slept through my alarm, feel daunted by my to-do list, and just want to crawl back in bed. I play the ‘Frustrated to Excited’ track called “A Smile at Dawn” and it quickly becomes one of my favorites on the app: The music is ethereal, groovy, and really pleasant, like a gentle trance. It captures the energy of a new day, starting sleepily and gradually building intensity and rhythm. As it plays on my walk to the office, I think about all I have to be grateful for.
Day 5: Getting in the groove of focused work. Today’s goal is to lock in to writing a big story. I put on a work-focused Spiritune track in the background as I do: a nice, upbeat alternative to the white noise I usually write to.
Day 6: Walking with presence. I’m in a great mood today, so I’m just looking for music to help me further embrace the moment. I head out to take a walk in the glorious fall weather with an ‘Energetic to Joyful’ track in my headphones. While I usually listen to music with lyrics on my walks, the instrumental music is less distracting and it makes it easier to fully take in my surroundings and tune into my other senses: the sun on my skin, the sights of the season’s changing colors, and the sounds of New York City.
Day 7: Staying steady through the 3pm lull. The afternoon slump has been hitting me hard lately, and I’m looking for ways to get through it that don’t involve reaching for yet more caffeine. Today, all of the words in the dense document I’m reading blur into one jumble and I find myself getting stuck on the same paragraph over and over. I play a ‘Lethargic to Energetic’ track, which begins softly and then has a really quick pickup; just the fresh burst of energy I need to re-engage with the task at hand.
Day 8: Going from irritable to appreciative. I’m antsy and rushing to get chores done around my apartment—not necessarily the most exciting way to spend time, but a ‘Bored to Peaceful’ track helps it go by a little bit faster.
Day 9: Falling asleep in a new place. I always miss my own bed when I’m away, and find unfamiliar spaces—no matter how comfortable—to be filled with distractions that keep me awake. This time, while traveling to visit family, I turn on one of Spiritune’s dedicated Sleep tracks as I’m trying to doze off. These longer tracks begin with 5-10 minutes of soft music then gradually transition into white noise. The soft chimes at the start of the track lull me to close my eyes, and I barely make it to the second part of the track before drifting off to sleep.
Day 10: Transitioning into the weekend. Friday evening has arrived! But once I shut down my computer, the work thoughts don’t necessarily turn off with it. I’m looking for help taking my mind off work so I can be fully present with my family for the start of the weekend. While a cocktail would usually be my relaxing tool of choice, I try a Spiritune track instead and it turns out to be a side-effect free way to transition the mind from one mode to another.
Day 11: Drowning out airport sounds. Why do flight delays always seem to happen in the most chaotic of airports? I have three hours to wait for my plane and I’m exhausted, but the screaming children and phone conversations around me are ruining any chance of a nap. I try to drown them out with a ‘Frustrated to Chill’ track and while it’s not quite immersive enough to make me fall asleep, it does help me relax and de-stress enough to see that extra time in an airport is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Day 12: Breaking up with the snooze button. My propensity to hit the snooze button over and over (and over) in the morning is one of my most deeply ingrained bad habits. Today I tried forcing myself to play a Spiritune Waking Up track after my first alarm went off instead. I did find that it helped me wake up in a timely fashion, the building melody acting like a jump cable for my sleepy brain.
Day 13: Starting the day more alert. As soon as I’m out of bed today, I immediately turn on Spiritune to play in the background as I do my morning routine. While I’m typically groggy and out of it for the first part of my day, the music helps me jump into things faster—and it’s not too cloying or energetic for my 7am brain to handle.
Day 14: Repeating the greatest hits. For the final day of my experiment, I took a victory lap and repeated some of my favorite use cases for Spiritune I’d gathered over the course of the two weeks. More on those below.

The results

Here are some of the ways I’ll definitely be using the app moving forward:

When navigating transition moments in the workday: Spiritune’s tracks helped me hop from one type of task to another, re-focusing on work after meetings or appointments, and switch my brain into relaxation mode after a long workday.
When winding down in a new place: It can be hard for me to wind down and sleep while traveling, but Spiritune’s tracks helped me find comfort in the unfamiliar.
When trying to relax in a high-stress environment: The next time I’m stuck in a loud airport or crowded area, you can bet that a calming Spiritune track will be playing in my headphones.
When waking up in the morning: I’m still tinkering with the best way to incorporate Spiritune into my morning routine, but knowing that it can help me break my reliance on the snooze button feels like a huge unlock.

Try it for yourself

Oct 1, 2026

From 1 to 100, Here are the Benefits of Listening to Music at Any Age

Babies and toddlers:

Tips for this age:

Sing or play lullabies for babies before bed to promote bonding and trust, and if you're breastfeeding you can play music then too.

Keep music on in the background while your baby or toddler is playing

Children:

Tips for this age:

Invite your child to choose music that matches their mood in order to help them explore their emotions
If your child shows interest in music, encourage them to take up an instrument

Adolescents:

Partner spotlight: Spiritune x Yale University

Tips for this age:

If you’re the parent of a teen, try leading by example and playing music to match the mood and energy of certain times of day
Encourage musical exploration so teens can pinpoint their particular tastes along with using functional music for specific needs like studying, calming nerves and more.

Adults:

Music can help you manage work to-dos, family responsibilities, and other joys of adulting with a bit more energy and focus.

Tips for this age:

Listen to music that matches the way you want to feel while going about your day (Spiritune makes this super easy!)
If you’re choosing music for focus and productivity at work, minimize distracting elements like lyrics, overlapping instruments, and key changes (again, Spiritune does this for you.)

Older adults:

Tips for this age:

Listen to playlists that correspond to certain times of your youth to elicit positive memories
Work with a music therapist for a more clinically guided approach to memory care

Sep 3, 2026

An Inside Look at How Spiritune Tracks Get Made

Here’s how Spiritune’s team of composers, scientists, and curators makes the therapeutic soundtracks you’ll find on our app.

Step 1: Set a strong foundation

“And then it came to, well, what are the things that need to go into our music tracks to compose for these types of therapeutic goals?” says Pabst.

While the Spiritune team has tweaked and tightened these recipes a bit over time, the same fundamental process is still used to make every new track on our platform.

Step 2: Follow the recipe, with a twist

Utilizing the sonic recipes, we then turn to our network of 30 or so composers to turn it into a science-based soundtrack.

Step 3: Review the track

Step 4: Share a finished product that moves you—and your mood

Every time you open the Spiritune app, you have access to our expansive music library, with new tracks typically added multiple times a week.

And there you have it! That’s the process we use to compose music that is clinically shown to move you—and your mood.