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  • CAREER FEATURE

Sounds of science: how music at work can fine-tune your research

Researchers describe how listening to music at work can boost (or hamper) productivity, and share the tunes that keep them focused.
By
  1. Nikki Forrester

    1. Nikki Forrester is a science journalist based in Davis, West Virginia. She listened to ambient electronic music while writing this story, until she realized it was too distracting.

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When it comes to access to music, this is a golden age. “You have an armada of music at your disposal at all times,” says Manuel Gonzalez, an organizational psychologist at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. It would take someone until the twenty-seventh century to listen to the 100 million or so songs currently available on the streaming service Spotify — without ever listening to a song twice, or to whatever is added from now on.

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Nature 616, 399-401 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00984-4

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