I've listened to Brain.fm since this past February, and it is truly amazing.
They have Focus, Relax, and Sleep, but I've only ever listened to Focus. It's like this steady stream of some kind of electronically generated music that changes each 30 minutes. I set it to 2 hours, and then I usually take a small break when it ends. I'll turn it on and literally get into the zone immediately; writing line after line of code without even realizing how quickly I'm working. It's like getting on a train to the Matrix or something.
Very cool of you, I was debating the $149 price tag, but at $30 I just paid before I could think of a reason not to.
Quick question: is there a way to use an audio player (e.g., Audacious, RhythmBox, VLC) to stream the music without using a web browser? The animated light curves in the background make the browser use 100% of a whole CPU core, which isn't ideal, especially when using a laptop on battery.
Hey, I'm really digging the Focus music. I was wondering to what headphones are you guys tuning it. It sounds awesome on my studio monitors, but it sounds like crap on my ATH-M50 cans due to the bass going over its limit unless I keep it to a rather low volume.
The joke at my old work was 'basically done'. Meaning they spent a weekend equivalent on a prototype. Management heard 'done' the rest of us heard 'not production ready'.
well generally I think however long the first 80% takes, the last 20% will take 1-2 times that.. but cool that they're working on an android version, I'm patient and can wait. Loving brain.fm it actually works to keep me focused.
Just checked out your site and it is great. The sound is superb and it really helps focusing. Also, your offer is super generous.
However, you only accept credit card payments. I would never give my credit card info to a random site just to read a month from now that they've been hacked.
Is there a reason you are not accepting PayPal or BitCoins? It seems that you are not using one of those big payment processors either.
I just tried it for an hour or so and it does seem great. Bummed on the lack of an Android app though... would've helped me immediately.
Anyway, I read your comments that it is nearly 80% done so I'll give it a shot and signup. The mobile version on Chrome browser works decently well so I think I'll manage with that till then.
Very cool of you guys offering such a big discount. Tried to sign-up, saw the banner (about the discount), chose lifetime subscription (even without trying) but my card still was charged $149.99. ;( Is there a way to fix this? I mean it totally maybe worth it, yet I wasn't ready to spend that much.
Impulse purchased this last night without really knowing what it was but boy was i impressed! Incredible really what you've done here and the developement team here loved it to! Well Played chaps!
I just spent 50 bucks for a yearly subscription to one of your competitors a week ago. My biggest complaint about them is that I can't get a list of tracks that I've really enjoyed and there's no upvote, play more like this feature. I don't care about social "likes" but some songs in an otherwise great playlist are just really grating and throw me right out of the focus window. It would be nice to say "don't play this again"
Signed. There are some other feature requests in this thread so I chime in:
- As someone else commented, the helicopter-like tremolo on some tracks can be quite irritating. When I find it, I skip. Unfortunately sometimes it starts later in the track and breaks focus. It would be nice to customize track preferences.
- A minimal web mode, no animations, no inspiring quotes.
- Android app but I hear you are working on this...
- Downloadable/offline tracks (if that's not part of the mobile app already; haven't tried iPhone).
I'm a little late to the party. I bought the lifetime license from an earlier link that had it at $40.
My question is, is the tremolo/pulsating nature of the chords (sort of sounds like a helicopter) on most of the music a side-effect to the AI generated sounds, or is this by-design? If by-design, are there settings I could tinker with? If not, feature request. :)
I'm starting to find this a bit unnerving after extended periods, but it could be a personal preference.
Previously I was cleaning cookies / local storage (to have more free sessions). Then I downloaded MP3 and created playlists. At $29 I have no other option but to buy it... HURRAY!
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brain.fm is like matrix, I admit!
No. It means if you're the last living customer of brain.fm, they will be forced by the authorities to operate their service till your children decide to take you off of life support.
Thank you. Tried it out, liked it a lot (felt improved from when they first launched), viewed the regular pricing and was trying to justify it... then found your link. Just purchased!
Seriously, while I think some people might dismiss your comment as snark, I genuinely was interested in this service, but am unwilling to create an account just to get a sample. Sites need to realize that "creating an account", while it appears as simple as supplying a few bits of information, anyone that cares about their time or security will find a few snags.
First, the email address. I don't give my email address away without thought as to whether this service will contact me in the future, how often, and about what. If I'm just trying to get an idea what you offer, I don't want to have to worry about you abusing that address in the future. My inbox is busy enough, thank you, I don't want to have to deal with you later if I've decided I'm not interested.
Second, the password. When linked to a global identifier like an email address, I'm stuck with the choice of using an easily remembered password or password template that I reserve for low interest sites that the accounts don't really matter on and the reduced security this entails, or coming up with a unique secure password (which either entails my trying to be random or a tool).
Now, I could generate a fictitious email and password just to try out your site (because I'm sure as hell not going to go through the effort of making a real separate email for you), but that entails me making a random email that isn't already used (what do you want to bet foo@example.com is already taken, or that domain is barred because they use it in testing?), and I don't want to have to think about that, I'm trying to get a quick idea about your service.
So, to site developers who gate examples of their service too aggressively, keep in mind every time I'm mildly interested in your service and you gate more info with a free account form, I groan internally. Of the mild interest I felt, and the feeling that made me groan inside, which do you think wins in the end?
In this case also just their interesting approach to privacy.
I'm not telling a random internet service for no reason my proper first name, my age or my gender. I can see that there's maybe a reason for age and gender when suggesting music (even though it should be optional nonetheless), but my first name? Are you going to suggest me songs where people chant my name or something?
And because they insist on this ridiculous requirement of entering my first name, it also just becomes much less credible that they actually need my age and gender, and are not just collecting that to sell it away.
I have a domain with a catch all account that I use for these things. I give "thisdomain@mydomain" as email, random password from lastpass (and before that, just random banging and storing in browser list or not storing at all).
Well worth the minor hassle in setting it up, and you get an indication about which site leaked your password or was hacked. I use thunderbird, which even lets me type a from address for emails to make this more useful.
Other than the very confused reactions when I have to give one of these custom aliases in person, I will never go back to giving my real email address.
Waaaay back in the day (probably 99 or 2000), I had the same with myspamstopper.com as my personal spam catching domain with the same idea (to know who was leaking). Alas, I accidentally let it expire and it was immediately sniped, and I never bothered to set something like it up again.
Not arguing against your general points here, just wanted to say that using a password manager (I use KeePassX + Dropbox) has made the 'invent password' part of the whole process that much easier for me.
Yeah, I was actually thinking about that while writing, but forgot to include it. I've still not gotten on board with the password manager systems besides what's included in the browser (but I should), and those, if they include automatic password generators, which hadn't occurred to me until I was writing the bit about a tool above, probably make that a lot easier.
Although, the fact that there are popular tools available to work around the extra cognitive load imposed with account creation and tracking is a very good sign that a free account is much more of an impediment to the general person than these sites seem to realize.
Also, it doesn't affect the fact I still don't want to give away my email address before I've decided a service is worth having an account for.
It's a shame, because I am interested in seeing what the service is like. The problem is that my interest is part driven by wondering how similar it is to my current technique (put on my "Glitch Mob", "Zack Hemsey" or "Carpener Brut" stations on Pandora), wihch means I'm interested if it's slightly better, because I'm not unhappy now. I am at the same time very likely to use their service if it's good, but unlikely to jump through hoops to find out, since I have a solution that to my knowledge works sufficiently, and I've even decided it's worth paying Pandora for. Not exactly the type of customer they want to keep from seeing their service in action.
I signed up when they first launched. I cought lifetime membership for $25. The beta version ran my CPU to 200℅ because some funky animation on the website. That added ab ambient white noise layer from the PC fan. It's was a feature :-)
The lifetime subscription is currently available for $40 over at TNW deals, ending in 6 hours from the point this message was posted. So if you like the service, this is probably worth it.
As a musician, I can guess this works on a base level because I like "white noise" type things too when working - specifically the laundry. If I have laundry going, I can focus and write / work on clay / draw with attention that music just simply won't allow for some reason. I guess what I'm inferring is that Focus is probably more aligned with white noise than an actual music listening experience.
I tend to always keep a fan running for the same reason. Even when the weather doesn’t make it necessary – I just put in a corner of the room facing against the walls. Its noise helps.
With music, instead, the less I know a piece the more attention it draws. I can’t work with background music for this reason. But Brain.fm barely has this effect on me, curiously.
If you like white noise, it might help you to save on electricity turning off the fan and trying one of these two aliases I keep around for noisy places:
Pink noise (not sure if it's actually pink noise):
play -c 2 -n synth pinknoise band -n 2500 4000 tremolo 0.03 5 reverb 20 gain
Ocean:
play -n -n --combine merge synth pinknoise band -n 1200 1800 tremolo 50 10 tremolo 0.14 70 tremolo 0.2 50 gain -10
The play binary is provided by SoX (sox.sourceforge.net). Worth mentioning that I did not create these, but I cannot recall where exactly I got them from.
I guess the difference is that music for listening is intended to capture attention, whereas music for focus should direct attention to where you want.
Looks like it is getting hammered with HN traffic and they posted their iOS app on Product Hunt yesterday too. Their iOS app eventually comes around to working (crashes sometimes when trying to listen to music) -- but they just released it + HN/PH traffic so its a good problem to have
Wow, great link. This is just what I've been looking for. One does wonder how much of it is expectation effect. I mean if I didn't know the Benny Hill tune and it was labelled "focus" would it still work?
I don't think it is a placebo effect for me, because there were times when it was less effective, based on the track that it started with - or when I would hear a specific set of tracks too many times and begin to recognize the patterns too closely.
At a point mid-summer, the effectiveness wore down for a while - I even asked Aaron (one of the founders, but also available via their little support window in the corner) about adding new tracks to Focus, which I'm sure others had also requested, because they added a bunch of new tracks and it became even more effective than before. They also seem to have removed some of the tracks that weren't very effective.
Just started listening to it. The Focus tab so far sounds like a simplified version of music by early electronic composers of the german school: Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, etc.
I just tried it today. It does seem to help keep me focused on work. However, the music is a bit too anxiety inducing for my taste. Even "relaxing focus" was causing a little stress.
They have Focus, Relax, and Sleep, but I've only ever listened to Focus. It's like this steady stream of some kind of electronically generated music that changes each 30 minutes. I set it to 2 hours, and then I usually take a small break when it ends. I'll turn it on and literally get into the zone immediately; writing line after line of code without even realizing how quickly I'm working. It's like getting on a train to the Matrix or something.
Link: http://brain.fm/