I forgot to listen to music for 6 months

I spent the last 6 months of my life being monstrously busy and because I was really interested in a couple podcasts, I totally forgot to listen to music with words. I had some classical music playing from time to time or some Byzantine chant if I was trying to learn it, but beside those two and podcasts I would normally drive/work in silence. I talk about some of the upsides of that in the video, but here’s a quick summary:

When you don’t hear profanities and really powerful rhythms, you become very sensitive to them when you hear them again. I was actually astonished to hear swear words. That’s probably not a good thing (people swear all the time around here) but it is a testament to how the content of the music you listen to really does affect your cognition. I found this to be especially true when listening to high bpm music for running: you really do feel on top of the world and it really improves your performance.

You do need to be careful about what you’re consuming, but I have found platforms like qobuz and bandcamp to be good places to get DRM-free music files of CD-quality or higher. You should have ownership of your media and platforms like Spotify or YouTube Music are opponents of that. Just buying the music you listen to is literally cheaper anyway. Physically ripping CDs from a local store or ebay is a good option too.