The new “Sound Therapy” playlists on Apple Music bring popular songs enhanced with sound waves or white noise to help you focus, relax and sleep.
Apple and Universal Music Group launched “Sound Therapy” today exclusively for all Apple Music members. Open the built-in Music app on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple TV and select the “New” section to access the new audio wellness collection.
There are three playlist available to help you focus, unwind and fall asleep, titled “Sound Therapy Focus,” “Sound Therapy Relax” and “Sound Therapy Sleep.”
Apple Music “Sound Therapy”: Focus, relax and sleep
Apple’s press release states that the company says “incredible engagement” around the existing mood-based playlists and the Apple Music Chill radio station, which prompted it to create dedicated playlists to help people focus, relax and sleep.
The Focus category “supports improved cognitive performance and concentration” by leveraging gamma auditory beats and white noise, which masks distracting sounds to get you in the right mindset to achieve optimum focus.
The Relax category brings songs blended and infused in theta to help you chillax.
The Sleep category infuses popular tracks with delta auditory beats or pink noise for deep sleep. Apple says this works similarly to white noise, “but uses natural sounds like rainfall and ocean waves.” To better understand how the new audio wellness category works, and the science behind it, be sure to watch the video introduction with Apple Music’s host Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
The science behind “Sound Therapy”
Apple writes:
Songs have been enhanced with auditory beats or colored noise to help encourage specific brain responses. Gamma waves and white noise — a whoosh-like combination of every sound frequency — may help with focusing; theta waves could aid in relaxation; and delta waves and pink noise — a deeper, gentler variation akin to rain or wind — might assist in achieving better sleep. A dreamy version of Katy Perry’s “Double Rainbow,” for example, could help listeners drift off to sleep, while an Imagine Dragons track might help them tackle a to-do list.
Many songs in the “Sound Therapy” playlists come from established artists such as Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry, Kacey Musgraves, Ludovico Einaudi, AURORA, Jhené Aiko, Chelsea Cutler and Jeremy Zucker.
(Re)introducing the Apple Music “Chill” station
The press release frames the “Chill” station as new although it rolled out in December 2024 (don’t confuse it with the “My Chill Mix playlist” that launched much earlier, in June 2017). The company says the “Chill” station’s programming is “a continuous flow of chill highlights across genres, interspersed with mindful moments meant to remind listeners to make the time to find center and calm.”
The original announcement said “Chill” is committed to a mood. “The aim is to offer respite through expert curation, a place where listeners can feel at ease at any time,” it reads. The station features Apple Music’s Brian Eno, Stephan Moccio and Zane Lowe, who take you through stories of calm and wellbeing in their own hosted shows.
Have you tried the Background Sounds feature yet?
I regularly use the Background Sounds feature on my Apple devices to listen to white noise as a way to increase my focus when working on my MacBook in a noisy environment like a coffee shop. Backgrounds Sounds will soon get even better; as part of Apple’s preview of the new accessibility features hitting its platforms this fall, the company announced new personalize settings coming to Background Sounds.
These include new EQ settings, the option to stop automatically after a period of time and new actions for automations in the Shortcuts app. The company claims that some users find that Background Sounds can “help with symptoms of tinnitus” by minimizing distractions to increase a sense of focus and relaxation.