Study harder, better, faster, and stronger

Studying is, more often than not, a fairly boring task despite its importance. Most people like to listen to something while studying, but not every piece of media is created equal—it’s common knowledge that listening to podcasts or something with lyrics are significantly more distracting than instrumental music. Therefore, here are the Beat’s four best genres for studying:

Lili Harris, Beat Editor

Classical

The classical genre covers a huge volume of music; even Bach and Beethoven, whose music cover the genres of baroque and romanticism respectively, are as different as modern country and death metal. As long as you find a composer you like and you stay away from songs with English vocals, which are thankfully uncommon, classical is an excellent choice that will put you right into the zone for studying.

Lo-Fi Hip Hop

Easily the most specific of these genres, lo-fi hip hop can be extremely repetitive. Many songs sample from the same handful of beats, which causes the genre to sound much more similar from song to song than the other choices. While this may be a disadvantage for some, the repetition can help a huge amount when studying. This, paired with the calm tone that the genre captures, means that it’s an excellent choice for putting on and getting to work.

Jazz

Like classical music, jazz covers so much different-sounding music that it is hard to recommend overall. However, if you exclude the obviously poor study music material, like overly experimental jazz and jazz with vocals, the genre becomes quite enticing to study to. Compared to classical and lo-fi hip hop, jazz can be much more upbeat and fun, and so long as you decide to listen to jazz that is smoother or otherwise more conventional, such as jazz from the 20’s and 40’s, studying to it will go great.

Foreign Pop

On the modern and upbeat spectrum, foreign pop is a great choice if you don’t want to change up your listening habits too much from what you usually listen to. After all, it gives the advantage of listening to music with vocals without those vocals being distracting, due to them being in a foreign language. It should be obvious to avoid artists that frequently use English in their music, but even listening to Spanish music while studying Spanish would work great in getting you to focus.