Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

brain.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 113 posts

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#101

Post by dan_brainfm »

SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #80
SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #52

It's only after hitting the "start listening now" button, after you input your name and email address, that it's made clear you're only getting 5 free sessions. I feel like I've been duped into giving my personal information away. If anyone from brain.fm is reading, don't underestimate how much resentment this kind of dishonest manipulation generates.

And, of course, there's no way to delete your account.

Hey I'm happy to cancel your account if your reach out at privacy@brain.fm per our GDPR stuff, or shoot me an email directly and I will delete it.

We are redoing our whole platform for January with a brand new account page. This functionality is included now.

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#102

Post by jploh »

They did a Reddit AMA that didn't do so well with regards to their paper and the research grant.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/85svjd/i_am_the_ceo_o...

I used it a couple of times before but it didn't work so well on me. Sometimes I tune to lofi streams on YouTube which work for me.

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#103

Post by dan_brainfm »

JamesCoyne wrote: post #2

$7/month for AI arranged pieces of human written music. Here is their white paper. https://brain.fm/assets/pdfs/new_white_paper_unformatted.pdf This appears to be the extent of their claim: "Behavioral results suggested this music did help people over time, but the differences in the brain appeared first, were easier to see, and verified that the experimental manipulation (added modulation) was having a measurable im…

Hi James

Thanks for checking us out!

The links you found are right, but we're evolving quickly and I want to help clarify:

1) The quote from the white paper is taken from a section titled 'How do we run experiments?' and is just one example of a particular experiment to illustrate why brain-imaging is helpful in our work.

Our claim is that we make useful music, and the white paper explains our process. As for particular experiments, we run tests of sustained attention, and look at EEG, fMRI, and other relevant measures depending on the category of music being made. Doing the science properly takes time and is expensive and we're doing our best to work on new collaborations to help speed this up.

If anyone knows anyone that can help here, please send me an email at dan@brain.fm

2) We are just about to submit a paper (and are working on others). We've been working to get peer-reviewed results out to the public, and can't wait to share. This is really important to Brain.fm and myself as science is the one thing that differentiates what we are trying to do.

3) The Sleep-EEG document shows pilot results on a small number of participants. These results are promising, but we have shifted more into focus as we received support (from the NSF and others) to pursue our Focus music, which led to the papers we're about to submit. We have plans to get more funding and research in sleep for 2019.

This is part of our new rollout and new platform, but if anyone wants to take a peek, here is the new science PDF here: https://drive.google.com/file/u/2/d/1kGDOxD0bnFrncNKFdljdkCe...

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#104

Post by dan_brainfm »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #3
JamesCoyne wrote: post #2

$7/month for AI arranged pieces of human written music. Here is their white paper. https://brain.fm/assets/pdfs/new_white_paper_unformatted.pdf This appears to be the extent of their claim: "Behavioral results suggested this music did help people over time, but the differences in the brain appeared first, were easier to see, and verified that the experimental manipulation (added modulation) was having a measurable im…

They do not seem to actually cite a paper for their claims, but I do wonder whether they use an active baseline for control group (i.e. music that is not theirs) rather than a passive baseline (no music). For myself, I wonder if Bach would do just as well for focus.

Hi 'Code

Silence is a very poor control indeed! We absolutely test against other music. For internal R&D we've tested against 'focus music' taken from other services, but this is not necessarily something you want to do in an academic paper.

Instead, in a paper we're working on, we take the even more controlled approach of testing music that is exactly the same, except for the addition of particular kinds of processing (this work is in prep for submission).

The question of preference and genre is very important for effectiveness, and people differ enormously. We try to offer a wide enough variety so people can select what works best for them in terms of musical style.

But no matter what the genre, Brain.fm's techniques are applied to make that music more suited to the task at hand.

For example, we do offer a selection of Brain.fm-ified Bach (in the Classical Focus section, under 'more music' in the web app). I love Bach but find it distracting when I'm trying to focus. Brain.fm processing removes some distraction while keeping the stimulating feel of the music.

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#105

Post by SuddsMcDuff »

dan_brainfm wrote: post #99
SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #52

It's only after hitting the "start listening now" button, after you input your name and email address, that it's made clear you're only getting 5 free sessions. I feel like I've been duped into giving my personal information away. If anyone from brain.fm is reading, don't underestimate how much resentment this kind of dishonest manipulation generates.

Hey thanks for the feedback. Sorry that you feel duped - it's not our intention to manipulate a user into getting their email to market to them and is why we ask people to opt in to our emails. I'm going to change the main button to read "Try 5 Free Sessions" to be more direct!

Hey, I'm very glad you took this feedback in a positive & constructive way. FWIW although my initial experience was somewhat sour, I have spent a good part of today using up my trial sessions and I do quite like your service :) I have 1/5 remaining which I'll use at work tomorrow, that'll be the real acid test!

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#106

Post by dan_brainfm »

swozey wrote: post #16

I currently use http://mynoise.net which has a huge number of various sounds by a research/sound engineer. I'd try this if I could without creating an account. Maybe I'm missing an immediate test somewhere (start listening now makes me create an account). Also please add google/github auth. I'm really over making accounts everywhere, especially if I'm just trying something out to see if I'll use it, a lot of us are n…

Hey Swozey, sorry for slow reply. HN is rate limiting me because I have a new account. I can confirm that Google Auth is coming in our next big release in January. While mynoise is great, I've used it in the past the main difference is we are trying to make music do more than just provide ambient noise. Hopefully you can give us a shot!

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#107

Post by dan_brainfm »

slig wrote: post #100
dan_brainfm wrote: post #98

Hey guys, Dan Clark here - the CEO of Brain.fm. I’m just seeing this thread now and want to jump into the thread and answer some questions and address a few of the comments and points of feedback you guys brought up. Feel free to ask me anything.

Hi Dan, Any chance to have a Black Friday lifetime promo this year? (for those that regrettably missed before) Thanks!

Sorry rate limited through HN for new account. Hey yes, we are doing a promo this year. If you go to our website on Black Friday you'll see a big popup!

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#108

Post by dan_brainfm »

zwayhowder wrote: post #11

I also have a lifetime subscription through some deal years ago, I find the most benefit is the music doesn't catch my attention. I can't listen to classical, traditional or other instrumental music without getting caught in the tune. (Music with lyrics is right out for me when I need to concentrate). I regularly have problems with the ios and Android apps not downloading or connecting, and generally just work with t…

Hey sorry for slow reply - rate limited with the new account. Thanks for the feedback. In January we are relaunching all our platforms account for music playback improvements. We have large files / long songs and ios and android get a little funky for streaming songs over 5 minutes we find. We are working our best to fix it! Ps. I love my QC20s too.

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#109

Post by dan_brainfm »

anerrorfound wrote: post #10

Just FYI your site is VERY broken on my mobile device (iPhone se Ios11 safari). First the home page loads nicely then before I even have a chance to scroll I’m redirected to home.brain.fm where it loads painfully slow (js heavy?) and when it loads is missing ~60% or content and just looks like a empty template. Totally unuasble. It does sound cool as an idea though.

Hey anerrorfound - thank you! We do have a mobile app, but our mobile website should work. We are on it!

Re: Brain.fm: Music to improve focus, meditation and sleep

#110

Post by dan_brainfm »

deegles wrote: post #12

I really enjoy Brain.fm and have the lifetime membership, unfortunately their app on iOS isn't very good at handling intermittent data connection and frequently cuts off. This is not necessarily their fault since I have other music apps that fall flat at the slightest interruption. You'd think playing music uninterrupted would be a solved problem by now!

Hey Deegles, thanks for the support. We are working on it. Unfortunately because our files are large and also long length we find some native streaming problems on IOS sometimes. We are relaunching new coded apps in January that should account for this. We're working on it and keep trying to improve!
Post reply on HN