Brain.fm is a unique service offering specialized audio for helping to improve brain activity & focus.
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Price
Free trial offered to see if it works for you. Once trial period ends, pricing is $6.99/month or $49.99/year when paid annually.
Features
Science-driven, composed music designed specifically to help with focus, relaxation, meditation and sleep.
Function
Aethestically pleasing audible triggers that seem to help increase focus and brain control to accomplish your desired task.
Pros
- Free trial available to test
- Affordable monthly and yearly pricing
- High level brain research utilized while creating audio content
- Different from your everyday binaural beats
- Works on both a web browser and mobile applications
- Great user interface
- Can be used offline via mobile app
Cons
- Some users may not find it effective
- Lifetime subscription no longer offered
Review Summary
After using Brain.fm for the last few months, I have found the service to be an innovative and worthwhile product that lives up to the hype.
It is one of the easiest and most effective ways I've found to focus on deep work task without stressing out my brain trying to force myself into the ideal state of mind for productivity.
I was surprised with the amount of real science involved with how Brain.fm operates, and any skeptics should read up on their white paper before they doubt the effectiveness of the technology.
Those interested in the service is to give it a shot if you are having issues with focusing or need help staying productive on a daily basis.
If nothing else, I found the free trial alone to be worth checking out for at least a few days to see what I thought of its features and effectiveness before deciding whether I wanted to continue with the service, which in my case was a no-brainer decision of yes.
A Great Investment for Focus
The Ideal Buyer
Someone looking to improve their focus, relaxation, meditation or sleep via the use of originally composed music that is scientifically designed for producing positive neural oscillations. I'd recommend this even further if you are someone that feels stimulation through ASMR as I think this service can accomplish a similar feeling of “brain tingles”.
Research has demonstrated that listening to our music can improve mental performance, both cognitively and emotionally. Brain.fm is scientifically designed to reduce attention deficit, increasing the user’s ability to focus in a focused way.
In the following Brain.fm review, I will touch on all aspects of the unique service, including the technology behind the tool, pricing and business model, user interface, features and the performance experience while using Brain.fm.
How Does Brain.fm Work?
Brain.fm works by using binaural beats–created by researching and combining two different tones of the same frequency–to track attention. Our music tracks these beats and amplifies them. By focusing your brain on the beat, it becomes easier to stay focused on the task at hand and reduces distractions.
There are three main categories of music offered by Brain.fm depending on your particular use case: focus, relax and sleep. Each category has a variety of subsections that you can choose from depending on the purpose of the usage.
The purpose of Brain.fm is to enhance concentration, focus, memory, and reaction times. However, there are certain genres that work better for certain tasks than others–most notably, classical music for studying and ambient music for falling asleep.
The Science Behind Brain.fm's Functionality
A lot of times with a service that charges you and says that you'll benefit from mental improvements, the product being served is built more on hype than a science first approach.
Brain.fm does not full under this category as they produce music designed for actual mental improvements which is outlined within their white paper on the service's website.
Within this documentation they state some interesting things about the science behind Brain.fm:
- Functional music is created using neuroscience and perceptual psychology
- Two-stage process with hypothesis followed by testing
- Their music produce neural oscillations which studies show enhance cognitive performance
- The service keeps from too much salience and distraction which other music often suffers from
- Humans are still composing the source music, but artificial intelligence arranges the motifs as well as adding acoustic features.
Brain.fm vs Binaural Beats: Are They The Same or Different?
While some users may mistake Brain.fm's technology for binaural beats, there are some key differences to note which change the effectiveness of each.
Binaural beats work by playing slightly different frequencies in the left and right ear. These are easy to implement and simple to understand, but not all that effective according to studies or considered even that enjoyable to listen to for many users.
Brain.fm's technology, on the other hand, is a proprietary innovation that uses real music as a carrier for brainwave modulation. This modulation is done by isolating the range of auditory frequency that corresponds to a specific brain state and playing a different note within that range through each ear.
The Brain.fm Pricing Model
While Brain.fm is a really awesome SAAS product for those looking to increase focus and productivity, it isn't free to use and that is reasonable as the company behind it needs to keep the lights on while offering such a useful service. The Brain.fm free trial allows you to try each of the different categories of brainwave entrainment before purchasing a subscription.
The free trial is short at only 3 days or 72 hours worth of access, but if you want an extended usage you can always sign up for a full month which only costs $6.99/month for their monthly plan with no long term commitments required.
If you are hooked on Brain.fm after the trial period, you can also opt for their discount annual plan which runs at $49.99 a year thus giving significant savings compared to their monthly plan which will run you 83.88 a year if paid monthly.
Either plan offers you unlimited access to listening to all the content that Brain.fm offer which is a reasonable fee to pay for increased productivity systems and staying focused on work, school or any other mental task at hand.
To some, paying for Brain.fm doesn't make sense when you can just google or YouTube ambient LoFi music for productivity or focus. However, if you care about increasing productivity through a truly innovative SAAS service while receiving access to exclusive audio content that is tailor made to increase neural oscillations, then Brain.fm is likely for you.
Brain.fm Lifetime Subscription
Way back in 2016 there was a lifetime subscription offered for the innovative service through the AppSumo marketplace. However, that was in a far more experimental stage of the company and they have no reason to host another Brain.fm offer at this point in the company's existence so I wouldn't expect a lifetime deal like this to ever arise again.
User Interface & Features
Brain.fm offers both a browser-based web app (I mainly use it via Chrome) and dedicated mobile apps. Both of these options utilize a modern user interface that is easy to navigate and are streamlined.
For example, on the Brain.fm home section of their web portal while logged in, you'll be able to choose which type of mood that you are seeking such to improve focus, relaxation or sleep:
- Focus – curated to improve focus to listen to while working, creative work, etc.
- Relax – listen when taking a break, meditation or just seeking some mental relaxation
- Sleep – listen while sleeping or taking a nap
If you click the ‘More Music' page, you'll be able to select from a large variety of genres that Brain.fm has specialized composed music for:
On the mobile app, you'll see the same options as well as a fourth option called ‘Meditate'.
There is offline access via the mobile application, but it is limited with only five songs offered with one for each genre by default. Thankfully, you can browse the available tracks within the app and click to download them for offline usage depending on your needs and preferences.
Performance & Function
I have been using the Brain.fm service for productivity purposes on a daily basis for about 4 months now. This is the first time I've used any type of artificial intelligence for any purpose such as this, but I am pleasantly surprised at the mental state of which Brain.fm can put me in.
Initially, I was skeptical about the actual science behind such an SAAS idea, but this has changed after reading the white paper and testing the actual technology first-hand. The soothing beats and musical compositions offered within this service are unmatched compared to those offered by Spotify, etc.
While it offers relaxation and sleep modes, I've really only been focusing on using the Brain.fm service for listening while attempting deep work on a day-to-day basis. I find great benefit with using the service for this as it allows my brain to focus on productivity tasks and block out any other distractions while still allowing me to stay in the zone.
Downsides & Complaints
There really aren't any downsides for using Brain.fm that I have come across. The user interface is clean and easy to navigate, the focus sessions are of an amazing length of time that are useful for productive systems & tasks, etc.
While it isn't a complaint per se, there are specific type of audible sounds that the composed outcome sometimes plays which does the opposite of calming my brain and focusing as it involves a ringing or ticking sensation that seems to exhaust my brain.
Thankfully, the easy way to prevent this is to simply skip the track once I've signaled that it is bothering more than helping me focus, and I've never had the service play the same distracting rhythm twice in a row.
Brain.fm Review Verdict
In the end, I found Brain.fm to be a valuable service that has improved my daily work life. If you are a productivity nerd like I am, then using the Brain.fm service will be an absolute no-brainer. If you are skeptical about binaural beats or neuroscience in general, then give it some time for testing for yourself as just because it works for me, it might not for you.
Also, I'd suggest those skeptical read more information about their white paper which goes over the scientific methods and findings involved with their innovative technology. This product has fully lived up to the hype for me and I have found great benefits from using the service to stimulate my neural oscillations while in my deep work sessions.
