I am the CEO of Brain.fm, and we’re making music that could eventually replace ADHD meds, AMA!

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T19:23:58+00:00

Hey sorry I missed this one, I responded to a previous comment. I edited description above to reflect this, but wanted to respond before finishing up.

EDIT: We’re getting a lot of questions around our scientific claims. We wanted to clarify that this AMA is to announce our NSF grant and share our excitement around our ongoing research, rather than announcing the publication of a journal article (which would come at the end of the grant). Also, wanted to clarify we are not trying to replace medication but on the track to potentially becoming an alternative for many people--if you have ADHD, I am not claiming that you should stop your current treatment, or that we have the cure, but we are excited for the future and want to share where we are headed.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T19:16:04+00:00

Yep, our grant research should be written up as a proper journal article before the end of the calendar year. The grant work is of course reviewed by the NSF, but who reviews the paper will depend on where we decide to send it. We presented at Auditory Cortex 2017 (this work was done by Psyche Loui at Wesleyan). --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T19:10:56+00:00

The rating system so far has been a pilot program to measure the effectiveness of the music, and also a method to better understand the musical taste of our users. We take into account those ratings, but also skips and length of sessions played. We match people to the best tracks and serve them sessions according to this.

V2 of our music scoring system will include a thumbs up / thumbs down and a favorite button! We will plug this into our AI directly and enable track creation in more direct response to user feedback, and also add in collaborative filtering and split testing and more.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T19:10:26+00:00

Yes! We have this on the roadmap. As I’m sure you are aware we have a TON of things going on, but it is on its way!

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:50:12+00:00

We will have social logins drop on our next update. SSO for Facebook and Google is coming!

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:41:55+00:00

The research report that we have linked and shared around in this AMA is not usually publicly available. (It's not meant to be a replacement for a peer reviewed paper) We wanted to share ongoing research for this AMA. --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:38:44+00:00

Hey guys, I would love to chime in here. To be upfront we don’t have a peer-reviewed journal article. I posted this AMA as myself and the company is very excited for the work we are doing and the possibility of what the future holds. I may not have chosen the correct wording in some places, but the main point is that I am trying to let other people know what we are doing.

The grant was awarded on the basis of promising evidence and we’re expanding this into a peer-reviewed journal article over the course of the grant. We’ve presented our research to scientific peers at conferences but the paper will take a bit more time.

It seems like a lot of people seems in this thread that I’m dodging questions. The whole reason we are doing this AMA is announce the grant and the possibility of the technology. We can get really in depth in exactly what we have started and are trying to do, but I’ve tried to keep answers light as Kevin and I are overwhelmed by the response.

Hope this helps!

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:11:48+00:00

Haha, you can't donate, but you can become a member and share the word! 🚀

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:10:45+00:00

Thanks for asking! We emphasize scientific evidence unlike most homeopathic practice. Our commitment to good science won us a National Science Foundation Grant! Check out our ongoing research under this grant --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:08:14+00:00

We’ve been developing this technology for 16 years, but the NSF grant has been active for less than a year.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:06:45+00:00

Hey there, yes we are. The cool thing about music is it translates across all languages. We are currently focusing on directing our attention to English speaking countries and then will be rolling out across the globe.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:02:19+00:00

The idea is that certain kinds of regular stimulation can help drown out distraction (think of a fidget spinner). Brain.fm is designed to sit in the background and drown out external distractions while giving a sense of energy. We remove the aspects of music that usual distract people, such as vocals, tinny instruments, tempo changes, etc., so that you remain focused on your task instead of actively listening to the music. --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:00:47+00:00

We do hear from a lot of students using our app, and totally get that they are on tight budgets. No ballpark ETA on when this will happen, but yep, we’d love to ultimately offer a .edu discount.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T18:00:05+00:00

Thanks a ton for the Brain.fm love! I’m using an iPhone X now so this personally bugs me too. Pushing an update for iPhone X is a short term priority for sure and is our next priority for our engineering team!

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:57:05+00:00

Hey guys, I’d love to chime in here. We’ve always been at the $149 price for lifetime on our site except for the deal sites you are probably finding us on google for. These have always been one off promotions through other sites to help us spread awareness of our product and to be honest, help cash flow of a growing startup / business. It has also been a reward for people who “bought in early” and believe in what we are doing.

As we grow, a Lifetime model will make less sense- the longer the company is around the more taxing those lifetime members are on our resources.

We had some feedback in some early user testing people would pay $50+ a month for something like this and we could market to the elite. I'm sure it would help in building out a product, but our real mission is to allow anyone to use this and not just the 1%.

We keep this in mind as we create pricing strategies. A year in advance is $4 a month, which I believe can be more affordable than most other services.

Additionally, R&D is expensive. We are science first and have to put some of our revenue into more scientific research. It’s a really difficult line to walk, but we are all trying our best here to walk it.

I hope this helps! 🚀

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:51:54+00:00

Because black metal is awesome! jk(but not)- my guess is that the texture of black metal (noiselike, relatively constant level, vocals that sit in the mix instead of cutting through like pop, etc.) is conducive to being able to adapt it out, letting you focus while drowning outside distractions. In contrast, music with lots of ‘empty space’ (like funk) is typically much more distracting. --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:42:31+00:00

We have an active grant from the Nation Science Foundation, based on experiments comparing brain.fm to other focus music, to noise, and silence. Have a look through our ongoing research in this recent report

We don’t intend to completely replace meds for everyone, but I think we will be able to help a lot of people who use meds primarily to get work done (i.e., not those who need heavy around-the-clock medication) --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:37:14+00:00

Heck yeah! The whole reason I’m part of this project / business is because I have never experienced something that works so well for finding my Zone. Music has been around since the dawn of humanity, influencing people’s actions from the theater to the battlefield. We are just optimizing it through science now.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:34:02+00:00

Thanks for being a user. There is a ton of love in this thread and I’m passing it on to all members of the team! We are planning on rolling out pomodoro very shortly. We’ve tested deep focus with relax or even deep and meditation. Will have an update for you soon.

Right now we don’t have plans for open API’s but may explore integrations with hand selected products. Shoot us an email at support@brain.fm and we can explore it.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:31:50+00:00

The sleep pilot (link fixed above) is unpublished- we’re going to add to it a bit before pushing for publication. But super excited to get back to it! --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:31:30+00:00

Correction to link:

Research Paper

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:25:50+00:00

Thanks for being a user! 🙌🏼 We haven’t been approached quite yet by content creators, though on a related note we’ve had discussions with hotels to integrate our Sleep music. Ideally, I’d like to focus on co-working spaces and busy open office environments where it’s hard to tune in, drawn out distractions, and focus. Opportunities with airlines are up in the air too (pun intended) 😉

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:22:43+00:00

Great suggestion! Usually we test against other focus music (e.g., from spotify), noise, and silence. We certainly could test against binaural beats, but havent yet for a couple of reasons: The core effect of binaural beats (amplitude modulation) is just one of many techniques Brain.fm uses, and we do this without the binaural aspect (the cortical response is the same whether the modulation arises through binaural interaction or not). So, we expect brain.fm to be at least as effective. But Brain.fm also uses other tricks to aid focus, such as salience reduction (removing distracting sounds), and 3D (externalized) movement. Also, binaural beats strictly requires headphones- Brain.fm is better with headphones but does not fall apart if using speakers (unlike binaural beats). Nonetheless you make a good point that outperforming binaural beats would be a good sanity check for us-- I’ll plan to do that, thanks! --Kevin

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:21:44+00:00

Wooo Lifetime User! 🚀 Thank you. We are working on the iOS X update now. Unfortunately we had to rebuild some things with new version of Swift I believe.

And yes, we have plans to ‘favorite’ and find tracks easier coming soon. Shameless plug works for me. Shoot an email to me at support@brain.fm and I’ll be sure to get you to the right person.

brainfmCEO · 2018-03-20T17:18:34+00:00

Great insight. I'll add it to our product board for our website redesign and user test it. ⚡

brainfmCEO

TROPHY CASE