Sounds Good! #40: Jammy, Apple, Feed.fm, Music Care, Functional Music, American College of Surgeons, University of South Florida, Well Being Digital, Zepp Health
Tracking developments at the intersection of music, health and techology
Hello!
Welcome to issue #40 of Sounds Good! — your regular roundup of happenings at the intersection of music, health and technology:
Jammy released a beta version of its app which aims “to make mental health more approachable and empowering for young adults by blending music, mindfulness and AI-powered emotional support”. Eric Davich, the creator of Jammy, previously co-founded the music playlist service Songza which was acquired by Google in 2014. The beta version was launched on Product Hunt in October, and was voted the #2 product of the week in the Health & Fitness category.
Apple has released further details of how its hearing health strategy has been developed in its Audio Lab in Cupertino, California. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), approximately 1.5 billion people around the world live with hearing loss. Shelly Chadha, M.D., the World Health Organization’s technical lead for hearing, is quoted as saying, “technology can play an important role in raising awareness and providing intervention options for those affected by hearing loss.” In the article, there’s a great video of the lab’s spherical array of 50 loudspeakers which is used to simulate real-world auditory scenarios.
Feed.fm rounds up some interesting stats on wellness music in a recent article on LinkedIn. “In 2023, the global wellness music market saw a 15% increase in streaming, driven by consumers seeking audio content to support mental and physical health.” Furthermore, the wellness music sector is expected to reach $4.4bn by 2026. The opportunity here is to move beyond generic white noise and rain sounds, and toward science-backed sound, provided by companies including Feed.fm, Brain.fm and Endel.
The Music Care Conference 2024 will take place on 23 November, either in-person in Waterloo, Ontario, or virtually. Topics will cover the healing power of music, the role that music plays in health and wellness, and new music care resources, technologies and research. Speakers include Brain Harris of MedRhythms and Emily Foulkes of Music For Good.
Writer, drummer and neurofitness founder Chris Draper has started a newsletter called ‘Functional Music’. In his own words, Chris is “working across a broad range of markets from marketing to neurotech, medical to corporate development” and aims “to join the dots in a fragmented and multidisciplinary field to create a hyper-connected community of creative founders who are working towards a common goal to innovate and develop new use cases for music.” Certainly some interesting crossover for readers of Sounds Good, so I would encourage checking out his newsletter here.
There are a mind-bending number of research papers about the health benefits of music (PubMed currently lists over 38,000 papers which reference music), so it’s always pleasing to find people taking the time to review these and pick out the key findings which are backed up by a broad range of studies. Researchers at California Northstate University College of Medicine considered a list of 3,737 studies (!) related to the benefits of music for patients recovering from surgery, and conducted a meta-analysis of 35 papers. They concluded that the simple act of listening to music after surgery can lower pain levels, reduce anxiety levels, reduce opiod use and lower heart rate. Their findings were presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress in October 2024.
The University of South Florida has conducted a small preliminary study providing piano lessons to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Jennifer Bugos, professor of music education, and breast surgical oncologist Dr Melissa Mallory, have looked at the effect of piano lessons on cognition and everday functioning in patients. They are now recruiting for a larger study, and working “to identify which technologies are most effective in measuring outcomes and how much training is necessary to maintain the benefits of music intervention”.
The Hong Kong electronics manufacturer Well Being Digital (WBD) started life as a developer of headphones for sports and fitness, but has now moved into health and medical applications to address the needs of an aging population. China has a vision to have 97% of its elderly cared for at home, and only 3% in care facilities, creating a need for monitoring devices to help family members in caregiving at home. This is another story which fits into the growing trend of in-ear devices as a non-obtrusive way to collect high-quality data for patients recovering outside of care facilities.
Smart wearable manufacturer Zepp Health has announced the launch of their new Zepp App 9. Key enhancements of their experience includes “personalised sleep music, meditation support, and one message per day to an AI sleep assistant”.
The Economist rounds up research by institutions in China and France which uses audio technology and AI to detect mental health conditions earlier than traditional in-person methods. “By analysing the acoustic properties of speech, these AI models can identify markers of depression or anxiety that a patient might not even be aware of, let alone able to articulate.” The accuracy of these methods also is impressive - correctly detecting the presence of depression 96% of the time, and able to classify the severity correctly (mild/moderate/severe) with 95% accuracy.
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Rob
Good stuff here... thanks. As a music therapist and writer, I am certainly living in this space.