The Healing Power of the Music, Fitness Connection

A growing number of people have discovered how music can help dissolve their daily tension, physical problems such as migraines and the emotional problems of anxiety and depression. Music and fitness share a common bond in that they both block out or redirect stress hormones, lower blood pressure, ease anxiety, energize and sooth us and improve our focus. When music and fitness merge, an even stronger bond is formed. We as fitness and healthcare professionals have the opportunity to use this music-fitness connection in our aquatic and group exercise classes and personal training and therapy sessions. This makes us all therapists of sorts, and the end result of a class or session is a total mind/body treatment.

The healing power of music is part of the medicinal arsenal that aids us in returning to our fitness activities after an initial illness or injury. Music relaxes us, which causes the release of endorphins (the “feel good” hormones). These endorphins create a way to manage pain and help us return sooner to our fitness activities.

Aerobic exercise promotes the release of endorphins, helping the brain to block pain signals. Exercise can also reduce the side effects of depression and anxiety that often result from chronic pain; swimming or aqua aerobics in a warm pool are extremely beneficial for this chronic pain. Not only do these endorphins help with pain, but they also help keep stress hormones (such as cortisol) in check. When our brain perceives any type of bodily stress, the hypothalamus sends a signal to the pituitary gland, which then tells our adrenal glands to produce cortisol. By keeping control of stress hormones, whether through regular exercise and/or listening to music, we might be able to help prevent degenerative diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

Music soothes the stress of chemotherapy in cancer patients, who are often stricken with anxiety and emotional upset during treatment. A study conducted by Barrie Cassileth, PhD, proved that out of 69 adult patients, those who received music therapy reported 37 percent less total mood disturbance and 28 percent less anxiety than the other patients.1

Just as the properties of water work as an analgesic to relieve the physical strain and pain of exercise, so does music. Music has a positive effect on exercise in that it distracts people from the effort, thus also taking their mind off the strain and pain. Researchers, such as Luis F. Aragòn-Vargas, PhD, agree that music’s positive effect on endurance and exercise performance allows people to work out longer and with more intensity. An added bonus is that music adds enjoyment-especially when it is music you like. For those in need of an “easy-on-the-joints” workout, water exercise will give you this. When combined with music, this type of workout will give you the benefits of resistance training with the added bonus of endurance, improved performance and enjoyment.

Do you know a musician who is also a good athlete? I have seen many in my years of teaching and training. Playing a musical instrument can sharpen your senses, improve coordination and give you a keener sense of timing. These are also the ingredients needed in athletic training.

Two studies where music, silence and static noise were used as control factors produced interesting results. In one study, the strength of the immune system was measured against these three factors. In the group exposed to silence, their immune systems showed no response and remained at the same level. Those subjected to static noise showed a lowered immune system response, while the group that listened to music showed an increase in the strength of their immune system. When using these same three control factors in an exercise bike test, the findings were that those who listened to music traveled 11 percent farther. In yet another eight-week walking study at Ohio State University, using subjects with serious lung disease, results showed that those who listened to music walked 21 percent farther than those who did not listen to music.

One method of combining music and fitness has shown positive behavioral changes when used with autistic children. This beneficial medium is thought to be due to music’s non-verbal and non-threatening nature. One may only need to find the child’s preferred music, and then it can be utilized. There is no style of music more beneficial than another. Music that the individual is particularly fond of will always have the best therapeutic effect. Using music in a game setting perfectly combines music with fitness. These can be simple activities such as passing a ball back and forth to music. Michelle Dozois, International fitness presenter, has discovered music’s profound effect with her autistic son. Music’s mood-changing effect is apparent as it calms him. “It changes his demeanor instantly,” says Michelle. “Music wakes up the body and mind in a therapeutic way.”

Physical therapy is an excellent example of using music for movement. Sharlynn Landers, PT, MPT, has used sound in working with patients on improving their gait. The “scuff” of the feet produces auditory recognition and enables the therapist and patient to detect differences or similarities in the sound of each foot.

Many healthcare professionals today use music to stimulate motor function. Patients with nerve impairment from Parkinson’s disease or a stroke have seen improvement from the benefit of music therapy.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, known for his book Awakenings (also made into a feature film), turned his early love of music into his work in music therapy. The patients he wrote about in his book were struck by a form of encephalitis that left them in a comatose state. They rarely moved and did not speak. Being convinced that “someone” was still inside each of them, Dr. Sacks used music to bring them out of this state. He found that playing the right music enabled them to change their stuttering steps even to the point of dancing.

Dr. Sacks also worked with Tourette’s Syndrome patients. He found that many musicians did not have tics while performing and that athletes showed similar relief when engaged in athletic activity. Dr. Sacks personally felt the healing power of music after tearing his own hamstring. When his physical therapist played music during his session, he was distracted and walked normally. He lost his ability to walk with ease when the music stopped.

Music intellectually refreshes us, and we are then able to perform better throughout our day. Music clarifies our thinking patterns, which enables us to make better decisions. Studies have shown that listening to music such as a composition by Mozart prior to taking an exam produces higher scores. Thus, one of the slogans of recent years was “Mozart Makes You Smarter.” Musical vibrations stimulate hearing and enhance brain development, so playing music when you are pregnant may improve your child’s IQ. It has been suggested to listen to slow, soft nurturing music such as Mozart’s, which mimics a mother’s heartbeat.

We know that exercise strengthens the heart and lungs, but many studies have shown proof that, just as with music, exercise also builds up the brain. Studies have suggested a positive effect of physical activity on brain function, especially in older adults. A recent finding using brain scans of men and women ages 66 to 89 found that those who were more physically active had better focusing abilities and were less easily distracted. Another study with 90 healthy, older women showed better memories and quicker reaction times resulting from a long-term exercise program. Adding music to a workout can produce a psycho-physiological effect whereby the participant is more highly motivated and able to exert his or her self more easily, with the end result being a higher performance level.

By using the power of music and fitness to heal, we can bridge from illness to health. We can thereby become more fit, strengthen our immune system and be led to better health and an overall well-being. Music has the power to not only enhance our workout, but also to give us the fitness connection between musical sound and sound health.

By Lori Pine

Lori Pine, MA, is the Programs Director at In Motion Fitness in Chico, California. She is an ACE. certified Personal Trainer, APEX certified Nutritional Counselor, holds a specialty certificate in Youth Fitness, is a Power Bar sponsored athlete, and has 25+ years experience working with youth and adults in schools, the community and the fitness industry. Lori also organizes special events and charitable activities including the BAM fitness conference.

Music Licensing – What, How and Why It’s Important for Your Business

Music licensing commonly refers to ‘royalty free music’ or ‘production music’. This is music that has been written and produced with the sole purpose of being used in another project. Anyone can then license this music for a fee, to use in their project.

What about commercial music?

Commercial music, written and performed by artists like Adele, M83 and U2 for example, cannot be used for any purpose other than personal/private performance. When you buy a CD or download an MP3, it is specifically stated that you cannot do anything with that song or music track except listen to it yourself. Any business use is prohibited, even playing it on the radio to customers at a hair salon.

To play commercial music to the public, a public performance licensed is required by the appropriate performing rights organisation of that country. In the UK it may be PRS or PPL. In the US/Canada, it may be BMI or ASCAP. These organisations arrange a fee to the proprietor of the business, based on the size of their business/location. This can be expensive, and time consuming just to play the radio to your customers on your premises, but does permit the business to play the radio to its customers without legal issues.

This is not a suitable solution for video production and filmmaking, as the usage and purpose of music is not the same. As many video production companies produce content for clients, they need background music for their video/film that is cleared for its intended purpose. When licensing commercial music, arranging such a license for online, public performance, in-store and mass distribution quickly becomes expensive and convoluted.

Royalty free music licensing offers a simple and cost effective solution to acquiring well produced music with all necessary rights for the client, within an affordable, transparent license.

Who needs to license music?

Anyone creating digital content with the intention of publishing it online or publicly. It’s really that simple. You cannot legally use music you have not written yourself, or licensed from a music library.

What about ‘home movies’ and ‘personal projects’?

The same rules apply to home movies and personal projects, but because these are produced not-for-profit, nor professionally on behalf of a client it is possible to use commercial music in this type of content. However, when this content is published to social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, you may find your video is blocked in certain countries, or deleted entirely. This is because commercial artists and record labels have an agreement in place that monitors use of their content on these platforms, and can enforce accordingly. There is however, many commercial artists and record labels who permit the use of their music in exchange for advertising. An ad will be attached to your content as a pre-roll, overlay or half-time break during the video in exchange for permission to use their music track. If you’re producing something personal, ‘for fun’ then this shouldn’t be an issue.

The risks of using commercial music in professional video

A client may want the latest chart hit in their video because it resonates with their target audience, or they feel it represents their brand. However, as outlined previously this could end up immediately being blocked or deleted with further implications like account suspension. If the video is not blocked or deleted, then it will be served with ads.

This is the last thing you want for your client. You’ve produced a video promoting their new product, and before the video has even started, viewers are being shown ads for competing brands and products. It degrades the potential of the video and the brand.

Why license ROYALTY FREE MUSIC?

There are THREE key reasons why licensing music correctly is hugely important.

1. You’re using music that will NOT be subject to copyright claims, blocks or deletion when it is published online. This means you can deliver your end-product to your client without fear of any music related issues.

2. You can MONETISE the content you produce. If you’re producing the content for your own online channel on YouTube, you’ll no doubt be entered into the partner program, to earn money from ads displayed on your videos. You cannot earn money from these ads if the music is not licensed, as it will go straight to the artist/producer of the music. Pay for the music license, earn money from that music license. Simple.

3. Create an identity for your video. Whether you’re producing something on behalf of a client, or yourself. If you use a hugely popular, well known commercial music track, chances are that song will resonate with the viewer more than your content. However, if you create really good video content AND license the perfect music track nobody has heard before, you’re offering a completely unique audio/visual package that is new and fresh.

What about free music?

If you look for it, you will find music that is available to use for free. But ask yourself, why is it free?

Free in exchange for ads and revenue.

The creator could be giving you permission to use their music in exchange for ad-revenue online via YouTube and Facebook, and you won’t know this until you publish it and get informed ads will be displayed alongside your video, with all revenue going to the artist.

A poor quality sample

The free music track you’re using could be a low quality sample of something an artist is trying to sell. This could be a low 128kbs MP3 that appears suitable, but when played back against high quality content, will sound quiet, muted and generally not as good. When music is licensed from a library, it should be available in broadcast quality WAV or 320kbps MP3 as standard.

Who else is using it?

You won’t be the only one looking for free music. People creating content purely for personal projects don’t have a budget for music licensing so they need something free. If you’re producing a project for a client who is paying you, would they be happy with you using the same free music track as everyone else? If it’s free, chances are a lot of people will make use of it.

Clearance and Assurance

Anyone can upload a music track online. There is no vetting, no quality control or legal assurance. Any Blog or digital content platform can host a music track for others to share. So, when you’re downloading a ‘free music track’ how do you know the provider actually has the rights to provide it to you? When you license a music track from a professional curated library, you have the assurance that every single music track has been reviewed, contracted and published legally for you to license and use.

Why pay for music?

There are thousands of music tracks online. What difference is there between ‘Track A’ and ‘Track B’? As a video producer/filmmaker, ask yourself this question: “There are thousands of video cameras available. iPhones can shoot 4K video and you can plug a microphone into them. Why should a company hire me to shoot their video”?

When you license music from a reputable library, you’re paying for the expertise in writing and composing the music track. From the start, middle and end. The quality of instruments used. The production of dynamic audio, the builds and crescendos. The post production mastering and edits so that a 3 minute piece can be condensed into a short 30 second edit without losing any of the magic of the music track.

The difference you get when someone films a corporate video on their iPhone compared to someone filming the same video with a professional camera, lighting and staging is painfully obvious. It is no different when it comes to music or photography. There is the technology, the knowledge the skill and ability to combine them to achieve the highest quality result.

What can I do with licensed music?

Whatever you want. Music can be licensed for limited use or global distribution, mass production and broadcast. You can license music for a specific purpose and tailor it to accommodate any additional requirements at any time.

Licensing royalty free music is intended to be the most cost-effective and practical solution for using music in your professional projects. General online distribution is commonly a one-time license fee per track for lifetime usage.

How To Gain Music Fans And Build Promoting Skills

Would you like to know how to gain more music fans? Do you wish you knew the secret to building a huge following? Would you like to know the best way to promote yourself as a musician? If you want to achieve long lasting success in the music industry, it is absolutely essential that you have a lot of dedicated fans who are interested in what you do as a musician. In order to do this, you must learn the most effective methods for promoting both yourself and your music.

However, the answer to “How do I get more fans and promote my music career?” is not easily found by taking a highly generalized approach that ‘seems’ to work for other musicians. At any given moment, you (or the band you play in) may be struggling with various unique challenges that would require that you take specific actions in order to get more fans or strengthen your promotional efforts. That said, no matter where you are in your music career and what challenges you face, you have 3 goals to achieve if you want to both gain more music fans and promote your music:

  1. You have to get more people to check out your music.
  2. Once someone listens to your music, you need them to help support you in some manner (buying your albums, watching you live, purchasing any merchandise, etc.)
  3. You need to transform your fans into totally fanatics who will use word of mouth to tell all their friends about you and your music.

No matter what it is that you are trying to achieve in the music business, the three goals mentioned above will apply to anything you do as long as you are trying to develop a strong relationship with your fans.

These goals may all seem to be separate from one another; however, they are in fact all connected. Once you are able to achieve success with any single one of them, you will greatly improve your chances for success with any of the others. As soon as you truly ‘get’ this basic truth, you will find it much easier to be productive in your efforts.

In order to achieve great success as you promote you music to your fans, you must learn how to think in a strategic manner rather than just taking inconsistent and isolated actions (a mistake that most musicians and bands make). Instead of trying to find a general formula that you can apply to help you get more fans for your music, you need to begin thinking in the same manner as most professional musicians. While training other musicians to succeed in their music careers, I help them understand how to find creative ideas that they can apply in their own music career in order to quickly gain more music fans. Once you gain the ability to think this way in your own music career, it will become much easier for you to overcome any obstacles that stand in the way of your promotional efforts.

To illustrate what I mean and give you various steps (that you can take right now to get more music fans), here are some quick and easy things you can do to accomplish all three of the music promotion goals mentioned above.

To get you on the path to gaining more music fans and expanding upon your current music promotion efforts, I will now show you various things that you can do yourself to accomplish the three goals mentioned above.

OK, now that you have finished the assessment above, continue reading to find several actionable steps below that you can use to promote your music. While you are reading through them, do not focus as much on the actions themselves; instead think creatively to see the ideas and thinking ‘behind’ the actions to understand why they are so effective. This will keep you from simply ‘copying’ them and will lead you to come up with ideas that you can benefit from in your specific music career situation.

Music Promotion Action Step: Get more people to listen to your music.

Solution #1: Join other musicians in participating in a compilation CD. After you have released a compilation album, you have achieved a couple of important things. First, you have successfully produced a record that contains your own music. Second, not only have you gained a tool to promote yourself to your fans, but you have gained a tool that potentially promotes you to every other musician’s fans on the album (with no additional effort on your part). Remember, the goal of this is not to make money directly, but rather to use the album as a very inexpensive tool to promote your music (and the music of the other musicians) to more people on a larger scale. You can also apply this idea as a way to leverage your own album releases and products to a bigger list of fans. The idea of “leverage” (using one action to gain multiple benefits) is absolutely critical if you want to achieve a high level of success in your music career. This is something I help members in my Music Careers Mentoring Program develop and refine.

Solution #2: Work together with other musicians locally. Instead of considering other local musicians to be your competition (for gaining more fans), work together with local musical artists of a similar genre to help you gain access to larger amount of fans who are interested in hearing and seeing you play music. One method for achieving this is to work with another band to perform at the same venue in an effort to bring together the fan base of both bands. By doing this, you will not only improve your relationship with the owner of the venue (because you are bringing in more people), but you will have the opportunity to advertise your music to the other band’s fan base (and them to yours). This idea is very fundamental, but in reality not many bands take initiative to actually go out and do it. On top of that, many bands make the mistake of sharing the venue with other bands who are not in their target market, or with bands who do not make a strong effort to attract their fans to the venue (thus taking away the mutual benefit). One example of pulling this idea off (which is fairly common in the music business) is when a band with a small following becomes and opening act for a much larger band. However, if you cannot find a highly successful band to open for you can still achieve this; you will need to simply find a band that contains musicians who have enough ambition to take ACTION and implement this strategy.

Music Promotion Action Step: Get your fans to take specific actions.

Solution #1: Make sure that people have incentive to both be a fan of your music AND purchase your music. Those who have mastered the ability to successfully promote music find ways to get their fan base to buy their music as opposed to downloading it online for free. Additionally, they are able to take an average listener and turn him/her into a loyal fan. A great way to do this is to offer something special to people who actually BUY your music (that cannot be obtained by simply downloading it for free). To effectively do this, it is important that whatever you are offering cannot be easily reproduced through digital media. This could include things such as VIP passes to your concerts, merchandise or other creative and unique items. The main thing to get out this idea is that you can implement a single strategy to achieve good music promotion while also developing a stronger relationship between you and your fans.

Solution #2: Become familiar with your current fan base. It is easy to successfully promote yourself as a musician when you can put yourself out there to those who already give you their support whenever you pursue new projects in your musical career. Most musicians think that their biggest problem is a lack of music fans, when in fact, they simply do not know who their real fans are and how to get in touch with them. Instead of contacting these specific fans, a lot of musicians focus their efforts on the general public. The truth is, this approach can work; however, promoting your music in this manner will cost a great deal of money and time. To dramatically cut down on your costs with regards to money, energy and time; make your musical promotion more effective by finding an easy way to stay in touch with your fan base at all times.

Music Promotion Action Step: Transform your current fans into FANATICS

Solution #1: Put together special gatherings or events that immerse your fans in your music and engage them on a whole new level (in contrast to merely listening to your music or watching you live). There a nearly endless ways for you to do this – limited only by your own willingness to be creative. However, remember the key is to develop your relationship with your music fans.

Solution #2: Focus on rewarding your most loyal fans with unique gifts that casual listeners don’t have access to. This concept can be used together with the first point described above or as an idea by itself. If you’d like for your music fans to take a particular action (for example bringing more people to your performances or to purchase your albums), focus on finding something of high value that you can offer them that goes beyond the scope of music. (Remember: Your music fans do not necessarily want free money or t-shirts… think of something specific to offer them)

As you have read, once you take a more detailed approach to understanding specifically what it is that you want to do when it comes to “gaining more music fans”, it’s a lot easier to understand specifically which action steps you must perform to make this happen. The majority of musicians only think about improving their music while trying to appeal to the general public, but doing this is only one aspect of musical promotion. Of course, your music is important; however there are aspects of your music career that you must work on in order to effectively get more fans for your music. As soon as you begin focusing on these aspects, you will start to gain much greater results in your music promotion efforts.