Quiet or cheerful.. Find out what kind of music helps you sleep

Studies show that nearly half of all people use music to help them sleep, relax, or distract them from stressful thoughts.

A study found that nearly a third of the songs people use to sleep at night are surprisingly high energy.

An analysis of more than 225,000 tracks from sleep-related playlists found that 31% of the songs were unexpectedly active and faster in tempo.

These songs outnumber calm and slow songs, as many people seem to prefer listening to something lively before bed.

And the researchers have no way of knowing whether the faster songs people drift off to keep them awake or actually help them sleep.

But they suspect that even rock music or party bands, if people know them well, can be comfortingly familiar and put people in a good mood, distracting them from the stress of the day so they might be ready for bed.

"If you're listening to a fast-paced pop or rock song that you know well, it might help you relax," said senior study author Dr. Kira Vibe Jespersen from the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University in Denmark. We are currently working to test the hypothesis that familiarity An important factor for sleep music.

The researchers analyzed their musical characteristics against a selection of popular songs people listened to throughout the day.

Sleep music is divided into six categories, with the most popular category, containing nearly half of the music tracks, being for "ambient" sounds.

These were often songs related to meditation or containing natural sounds or specific musical tones.

However, three music categories, containing nearly 70,000 out of a total of 225,626 pieces of music, were significantly different from this, with participants choosing noisy music.

It contained rap music, while the other two sets were filled with more lively modern pop radio songs.

"I was surprised by the amount of variation in the music people choose to listen to to sleep," Jespersen added. "But we also still have the classics," but not as much as the loud music.