Music has incredible power and influence over our lives and emotions. This phenomenon has been well documented over the last few decades; anywhere that anxiety or attention is a concern, you will find music being used in therapeutic and beneficial ways. Music is used to great effect in many different industries, and here we will demonstrate some examples.

Professional Poker Players

Where there is a need to maintain a constant and steady focus, you’ll find professionals using their favorite music to stay in the zone. Card players are known for their ability to sit at a table for hours on end, grinding out hands. What they listen to will certainly depend on their personal tastes, but there are plenty of poker themed songs as countless musicians and lyricists have drawn inspiration from the famous game. Considering how often rival players will try to goad one another and affect their playstyle, music will certainly help to drown out all of this and help them stay focused on their own strategy. It can also be a big factor in mitigating the anxiety and pressure that comes with high-stakes games.

Surgeons

While you may be surprised to hear this, surgeons are also well-known for listening to music during their procedures. Many people may be puzzled by this as they assume that surgeons must work in complete silence to perform to the best of their ability, but music helps them to do precisely that. Whether it is their favorite albums, or a hand-crafted music streaming channel, music helps them to manage stress and stay focused on their work for long periods of time. Studies have shown that as a result, their surgical incisions and stitching is much cleaner, faster, and more precise.

Marketing and Advertising

Music is incredibly powerful as it has the potential to influence us and affect our brain and emotions overall. According to research, the same parts of the brain that are used when we process music are also activated when recalling memories. This creates a strong association between music and our own personal experiences. Of course, this has long been studied by marketers and advertisers to help sell products and services.

Brands like Apple have been recognized for their many successful advertising campaigns. Their strategy has been to utilize colorful, high energy advertisements and pair them with unique indie and pop songs. This has resulted in many successful efforts to attribute a youthful and high-energy image to the Apple brand. Branding as a whole is another area where music can have a massive effect as it can successfully establish a certain attitude which a company wishes to convey.

Athletes and Sports

Of course, music also plays a massive role in the world of professional sports and there are countless examples of this. Sports stadiums are known for using certain songs that will generate a response from the audience. These songs will get the crowd in a frenzy for the next play and keep them engaged during breaks in the action.

Music is also used as a performance aid in this area. Sports teams have made it a habit to listen to adrenaline-pumping music in the locker rooms before a big game for the same reasons, as it gets the athletes ready to compete. Athletes may also use music to enhance their workouts and practices in between matches.

Then there is another way that athletes use music for its potential psychological effects. When professional boxers or MMA fighters make their walk to a ring for a fight, it’s known as their “walk out.” This is normally accompanied by a song of their choosing. Now this may be a specific song that fills them with joy and energy, or it may be a song that was specifically chosen to strike fear into the heart of their opponents.

Throughout the years, numerous fighters have used music to enhance their fearsome reputations. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this is Mike Tyson. In the late 1990s, Tyson was the most feared boxer on the planet. His walk out was met with a stunned and silenced crowd and his opponent was forced to listen to anything from aggressive rap songs to dark, ambient, and mechanical sounding tracks.