pop music for homework

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The Ultimate Study Music Playlist

This is a playlist of my favorite study music. It’s great for homework, studying for exams, reading, and generally getting crap crossed off my many checklists.

I’ve been working on this playlist for several years, and it contains music (all non-lyrical) from a wide variety of genres and sources, including video game/anime/movie soundtracks. At the moment, it’s got about 240 songs for you to choose from.

Listening on another app? I’ve worked to mirror this study playlist to other services. Check them out below:

• Spotify Study Music Playlist
• Apple Music Study Playlist

If you’d like, you can study with me in another tab while this plays. You can also listen to the playlist on YouTube instead of on this page.

By the way – I create my own study music as well! If you’d like to give it a listen, here’s a playlist:

You can also follow me on Spotify or on YouTube if you want to be notified when new tracks are released.

Need even more study music?

Here are a few options.

Brain.fm – Music designed specifically to help you focus more effectively. It works really well for me, and I use it for around 50% of my research, writing, and reading sessions – the other half are mostly done with the playlist above.

Piano Study Playlist – If you’re in the mood for a more consistent playlist, check out this one full of solo piano tracks.

Coffitivity – Sometimes I’m in the mood for ambient noise instead of music, and the sounds of a bustling coffee shop are my personal favorite type.

Noisli – An ambient noise generator that lets you create your own mix using sounds like rain, thunder, fan, and white/brown/pink noise.

More Playlists

Work Vibes – My personal playlist of “getting-stuff-done” music. Most of the tracks here have vocals, so I wouldn’t read or study intently with them. But they’re great for crushing emails, working on design projects, or doing other work where I simply need to execute quickly.

Tom’s Workout Playlist – A collection of the tracks that usually accompany me to the gym.

“Hey Siri, play the Homework playlist.”

100 Songs, 5 hours, 12 minutes

Featured Artists

Still woozy, soccer mommy, beabadoobee, cautious clay, leon bridges, africa, middle east, and india.

• Côte d’Ivoire
• Congo, The Democratic Republic Of The
• Guinea-Bissau
• Niger (English)
• Congo, Republic of
• Saudi Arabia
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa
• Tanzania, United Republic Of
• Turkmenistan
• United Arab Emirates

Asia Pacific

• Indonesia (English)
• Lao People's Democratic Republic
• Malaysia (English)
• Micronesia, Federated States of
• New Zealand
• Papua New Guinea
• Philippines
• Solomon Islands
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• France (Français)
• Deutschland
• Luxembourg (English)
• Moldova, Republic Of
• North Macedonia
• Portugal (Português)
• Türkiye (English)
• United Kingdom

Latin America and the Caribbean

• Antigua and Barbuda
• Argentina (Español)
• Bolivia (Español)
• Virgin Islands, British
• Cayman Islands
• Chile (Español)
• Colombia (Español)
• Costa Rica (Español)
• República Dominicana
• Ecuador (Español)
• El Salvador (Español)
• Guatemala (Español)
• Honduras (Español)
• Nicaragua (Español)
• Paraguay (Español)
• St. Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• St. Vincent and The Grenadines
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turks and Caicos
• Uruguay (English)
• Venezuela (Español)

The United States and Canada

• Canada (English)
• Canada (Français)
• United States
• Estados Unidos (Español México)
• الولايات المتحدة
• États-Unis (Français France)
• Estados Unidos (Português Brasil)
• 美國 (繁體中文台灣)

4 best music for homework that’ll dramatically improve your productivity

Choosing the right music for homework can help you focus better and learn faster.

Around 60% of students tend to listen to music while studying. Researchers also found that listening to music was the most popular side activity for teens who juggled studying with another task.

While we may prefer different genres of focus music, we can all agree that the right playlist has the magical ability to boost concentration.

This is because music activates the most diverse networks of the human brain. It’s been proven that people with ADHD focus better with the right music.

This is on top of  existing research  that has found listening to music reduces anxiety, blood pressure, and improves sleep quality, mood, and memory.

Johns Hopkins University researchers have done work on jazz performers improvising inside an fMRI machine to see which areas of the brain light up as well.

They found that jazz musicians make unique improvisations by turning off inhibition and turning up creativity.

In short, if you find the right music for homework, you can elevate both brain power and creativity.

While there isn’t a one-size-fit-all approach to this, let us help you narrow down some of the best genres for you to try:

Here are the five best music for homework to help you increase your productivity:

Having the right music matters, even for top athletes. Source: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

1. Classical music

When picking music for homework, you’ve probably heard how classical music can increase your focus when studying.

There’s a theory dubbed “The Mozart Effect” that suggests this genre of music can enhance brain activity and arouse your brain to focus.

There are also several studies done where students listening to classical music did better on quizzes than students with no music.

Suggestions:

• ClassicFM  (a free radio streaming platform that plays famous classical pieces)
• “Study Playlist: Classical Music” on Spotify
• “Classical Music for When You’re on a Deadline” on YouTube

2. Video game music 

This might surprise you but video game music is actually one of the best music for homework. According to Orion Academy , video game music is designed to keep you absorbed and focused — which is also great for memorising. 

When your brain is focused on just melody, it’s taking a break from trying to break down the lyrics of a song and thus increases your performance .

Video game music tends to stay at a relatively low, constant volume too, preventing you from becoming distracted by sudden increases in volume.

Since video game music is generally fast-paced, your brain will be constantly engaged in the task at hand.

• “Video game soundtracks” on Spotify
• “Video game music for studying” on YouTube
• Choose favourites from this list and create your own playlist!

3. RnB 

If you’re someone who easily gets distracted, RnB may not be the best music for homework for you. There’s a high chance that you might spend too much time jamming to the lyrics of the song instead of focusing.

Though music under his genre generally has lyrics, many RnB fans reported feeling more relaxed, focused, and less stressed, which may have a positive impact on their ability to focus and learn.

• “Study R&B Smooth Songs ” on Spotify
• “Chill R&B Beats Mix – Beats to Relax and Study (Vol.1)” on YouTube

4. Nature sounds 

It’s been shown that nature sounds relax our nervous system. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  have also discovered that natural sounds boost moods and focus.

The study found employees were more productive and had more positive feelings when nature sounds were playing in the background while they worked.

Nature sounds include the soothing sounds of the rain, ocean waves on the beach or even the jungle. Some prefer listening to bird calls and animal noises, so feel free to explore if nature sounds aren’t the right music for homework for you. 

Relaxing Nature Sounds for Sleeping – Natural Calm Forest Waterfall Music Meditation Sound for Study on YouTube

“Nature Sounds For Concentration” on Spotify

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Best Pandora Stations for Studying

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• B.A., English, University of Michigan

Almost everyone has a smartphone these days, and with it comes the ability to rock out to music whenever the mood strikes. Since Pandora Internet Radio is probably the most well-known place to grab free music on the go, and tons of students love to listen to music while they study, it only stands to reason that people might need some advice about choosing the best Pandora stations for studying and homework.

Genre Pandora Stations

When you log in to Pandora, you can choose an artist, a genre, or a song to get started. A musical genre is simply a style of music. Rock is a genre. So is punk. So is jazz. Pandora's site does have genres such as country and classical and hip-hop, and it also has a set of genres that have more to do with the overall emotional flavor of a collection of music rather than a particular genre. Pandora has a comprehensive and frequently updated genre list that you can browse to get started.

Since researchers are at least agreed that quieter music without lyrics is the most conducive music to study to (barring no music at all), here are a few genre Pandora stations that may be ideal for you to study by. Some are instrumental only, and they cover a wide range of musical styles.

Instrumentals

Fifteen million listeners can't be all wrong: in Pandora's Instrumentals genre you'll find everything from Dr. Dre to bluegrass to techno to jazz. These instrumentals are basically tracks from some of the top names in the business without the words to mess with your brain space; there's even a specific station called Instrumentals for studying .

Quiet Tracks

Willing to risk some lyrics? Pandora has three muted genres that might work for you. Pandora's Wind Down genre includes a collection of stations such as the Buddha Bar, with surreal lyrics, modal harmonies, and a slow-moving bass line.

The Chill genre contains stations that are mostly acoustic playlists, with an emphasis on calm, sedate music. Styles range from coffeehouse-style folk music to pop music versions to classics, country, and indie channels.

Pandora's Easy Listening channels include the light side of movie soundtracks, show tunes, cool jazz, solo piano, and light rock.

New Age and Classical

Pandora's New Age genre has several channels perfect for taking your anxiety over that deadline down a notch or two. Here you'll find music suitable for relaxation, spa, ambient, and a whole range of subareas of New Age music types: instrumental, acoustic, solo piano, and beats. Just don't fall asleep.

The Classical genre has a number of good channels that might trip your studying trigger: classical guitar, symphonies, renaissance, baroque. A  Classical for Studying Radio  channel promises a New Age aesthetic and an overall meditative sound. and a channel for Work might also do the ticket.

In the End, It's All Between the Ears

It's quite possible that some people do better with background music: people have different tastes, different study habits, and different ways of handling noise and distraction. Surveys of students themselves often say music helps them concentrate, keeps them company, alleviates boredom, and helps them learn faster.

With free music sources like Pandora and Spotify, selecting the exact music you need might actually be a distraction in itself.

Is Music While Studying Even a Good Idea?

A few scientific studies have been conducted on the effect of music or other background noise on maintaining concentration. Most report that the best studying environment of all is silence. Since all music processing uses cognitive capacity, the theory goes, listening to music could impair task performance involving your brain. Most of the studies, however, have been relatively unsystematic and somewhat inconclusive, because so much depends on an individual student's preferences and study habits, and the enormous number of musical genres available.

If students study with music playing, they seem to perform better when the music is calm and they don't engage with the music. In other words, don't sing along, for example, or don't pick music that you either don't like or like too much. Your emotional response to music does add to the distraction value: music that is too stimulating or too sleep-inducing will also be a distraction.

So: if you are the kind of student who needs music as a background to study , to act as white noise to keep other people's voices or the radiator's banging or personal worries out of your head, keep it low enough that you won't actually pay much attention to it. If you find yourself singing along, change the station.

• Cassidy, Gianna, and Raymond A.R. MacDonald. " The Effect of Background Music and Background Noise on the Task Performance of Introverts and Extraverts ." Psychology of Music 35.3 (2007): 517-37. Print.
• Furnham, Adrian, and Lisa Strbac. " Music Is as Distracting as Noise: The Differential Distraction of Background Music and Noise on the Cognitive Test Performance of Introverts and Extraverts ." Ergonomics 45.3 (2002): 203-17. Print.
• Hallam, Susan, John Price, and Georgia Katsarou. " The Effects of Background Music on Primary School Pupils' Task Performance ." Educational Studies 28.2 (2002): 111-22. Print.
• Kotsopoulou, Anastasia, and Susan Hallam. "Age Differences in Listening to Music While Studying." 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition . University of Bologna, 2006. Print.
• Kotsopoulou, Anastasia, and Susan Hallam. " The Perceived Impact of Playing Music While Studying: Age and Cultural Differences ." Educational Studies 36.4 (2010): 431-40. Print.
• Umzdas, Serpil. "An Analysis of the Academic Achievement of the Students Who Listen to Music While Studying." Educational Research and Reviews 10.6 (2015): 728-32. Print.
• The Top 4 Study Music Apps to Download Today
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• What "Introvert" and "Extrovert" Really Mean
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Pop Songs - Whole Unit & Booklet

Subject: Music

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

22 February 2018

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A bundle is a package of resources grouped together to teach a particular topic, or a series of lessons, in one place.

The Popular Music Key Stage 3 Pack - Pop, Blues & Reggae Music

In this pack you have enough resources to essentially teach Musical Future-style projects for a whole year! The main areas covered are: Pop Music Blues Music Reggae Music You will receive 3 work booklets that contain enough information for homework/out of class activities, contextual understanding, SMSC etc. You will also receive worksheets that teach your students about the 12 Bar Blues, 3 Little Birds by Bob Marley, Price Tag by Jessie J & Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day. This is a fantastic bundle for any department that needs that little bit extra to get the children engaged or a department that wants to build a strong performing culture. Each piece of work has a strong emphasis on both context of music and performance.

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To be honest I had expected more - the booklet is fine and I'll be able to use it eventually but the description implied that this was a full unit. As it is, the booklet is only a student handout which refers to other things, and I will need to develop the lesson plans, powerpoints, videos (which are referred to in the booklet but not included in the download) and so on in order for this to be usable.

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