Last updated: October 2, 2026
Instrumental music for studying can help you focus, while songs with lyrics tend to get in the way. In studies, lyrics made reading and memory slightly worse and instrumental music mostly didn't, and a small 2025 study found that instrumental music helped attention. Keep the volume low, and save your favorite songs for the break.
We make StillTune, an app that plays instrumental music for focus and sleep, so we have an obvious interest in people studying with music on. We've tried to report the research as it stands, including the parts that don't flatter background music.
Does music help you study, or does it distract you?
Researchers have tested this many times, and the results look messy until you sort them by what was playing and what people were doing. A 2011 meta-analysis in Psychology of Music pooled studies of background music in adults. Averaged across everything, the effect came out close to zero. When the authors compared music with no music for specific outcomes, background music disturbed reading and had small harmful effects on memory, but it improved emotional reactions and sports performance.
In other words, background music can make a task feel better, but in these studies it didn't help reading or memory.
Why do lyrics make studying harder?
A 2018 meta-analysis of 65 studies on reading with background sound found that noise, speech, and music all had a small but reliable harmful effect on reading. Speech you could understand and music with lyrics were the most distracting, and the effect was generally similar for adults and children.
A 2023 study from the University of Porto put this to a practical test with about 120 college students. They did verbal memory, visual memory, reading comprehension, and arithmetic tasks in three conditions: silence, instrumental lo-fi hip-hop, and popular Portuguese songs with lyrics. Compared with silence, the songs with lyrics lowered scores on both memory tasks and on reading comprehension. Their effect on arithmetic wasn't clear. The study ran online, and accuracy on the reading test was above 90%, so the test may have been too easy to pick up small differences.
The students also rated their own learning. They noticed that the lyrics were getting in the way, but some of them felt the lo-fi was helping, even though their scores didn't show it.
Is instrumental music for studying any better?
A set of four experiments with about 800 adults in the UK compared the same songs with and without vocals. People read short passages one word at a time, pressing a key to see each next word. They read in silence, with a song playing, or with the instrumental version of that song. In three of the four experiments, people read more slowly with the lyrics than without them, although comprehension mostly held up. The instrumental versions didn't slow reading compared with silence, and in two experiments people read slightly faster with them.
The effects were small, and the authors note that their passages were short and easy, so harder material might show more distraction. Their practical advice was to listen to instrumental music rather than music with lyrics when you read.
In the Porto study, the instrumental lo-fi didn't credibly hurt or improve performance on any of the four tasks compared with silence. Taken together, instrumental music looks like a safe enough background for reading. We haven't seen good evidence that it helps you learn more.
Can music help you focus at all?
There are some signs it can help with attention and mood. A 2025 study from the University of Lille in France had 34 adults do an attention test and a word-fluency task under three conditions. They worked in silence, with a calm instrumental piece at 60 beats per minute, and with a lively one at 120. The authors report that background music helped attention and word production over the course of the session, and both pieces made the tasks more enjoyable than silence. The lively piece made the attention task feel more effortful.
That was a small study with two unfamiliar pieces of music, so treat it as a hint. The authors' suggestion was to match the energy of the music to the demands of the task.
If music makes a long study session easier to start and stick with, that's a good enough reason to play it. Just keep the words out of it.
What we'd do with music for studying
Play instrumental music for reading, writing, and memorizing. Save songs with lyrics for breaks or for routine work you already know how to do.
Pick calm music for dense reading. If a track makes you feel wired, try something slower.
Skip songs you know by heart. To our ears, a favorite song is much harder to tune out than something new.
Keep the volume low, especially with earbuds. The NIDCD at the National Institutes of Health says sounds at or below 70 dBA are unlikely to cause hearing loss, even after long exposure. Long or repeated exposure at 85 dBA or more can cause it.
Test it on yourself. Study one session with music and one without, then quiz yourself on each. Trust the quiz more than how the session felt.
Choose silence if even instrumental music bothers you. It's a perfectly good way to study.
If you find it hard to concentrate most days no matter what you try, it's worth talking to a doctor about it.
How StillTune fits
StillTune's Focus mode plays instrumental music with no lyrics, built from bells, glass, handpan, flute, and soft pads. It never repeats and has no loop point, so you can leave it running through a long session without picking the next track. Every note is synthesized on your device in real time: StillTune works out the composition on its servers and your phone performs it. You can add ambient layers such as rain or wind, or a white, pink, or brown noise layer, and the app works offline once you've played a mode online. We haven't seen StillTune itself tested in a study, so the research above is about instrumental music in general.
StillTune is free with ads, and an optional Pro plan removes them. You can read more about how it's built on our focus music page, browse the sounds you can layer in, or download StillTune on the App Store.
Frequently asked questions
Is it bad to listen to music while studying?
Not if the music has no lyrics. In the studies we read, instrumental music mostly didn't change reading or memory compared with silence, while music with lyrics made both slightly worse. Keep the volume low, and judge by what you remember rather than how the session felt.
Does classical music help you study?
We haven't found good evidence that classical music beats other instrumental music. The studies we read that measured reading or memory used lo-fi hip-hop and instrumental versions of songs, and neither clearly improved reading comprehension or memory compared with silence. Classical music without singing is a reasonable choice for the same reasons.
Is lo-fi good for studying?
Lo-fi without vocals is a fair choice. In a 2023 study with about 120 college students, instrumental lo-fi hip-hop didn't credibly hurt or improve memory, reading, or arithmetic compared with silence. Watch for lo-fi tracks with vocal samples, since speech and lyrics are the biggest distractions when you read.
Should I study in silence instead?
Silence is a perfectly good choice, especially for difficult reading. If music helps you start and stay put, quiet instrumental music is a reasonable compromise. Noise isn't neutral either: a 2018 meta-analysis of 65 studies found that background noise also slightly hurt reading. For bedtime listening, see our guide on whether it's bad to sleep with music on.