Keeping track of new music, media and industry news.

Music can be a great aid to hard work, and not just if you’re in a chain gang or singing sea shanties on a whaling ship – I can barely bring myself to open an email without ‘In The Trees’ by Faze Action blasting out the stereo. However, music can also be a massive distraction. For instance, I just played ‘Mr. Moustache’ by Nirvana in the office and a colleague literally leapt out of his chair and jumped around the room for the duration of the song. He then sat back down and had an immediate panic attack about all the extra emails that had piled into his inbox while he’d been throwing himself about.

The idea behind focus@will is to find and play music that will help you concentrate while you’re trying to work. Largely this turns out to be stuff along ambient and classical lines, with the app’s creators claiming it can help improve concentration by 400% and is “extremely effective for 2 out of 3 people” (the third probably discovered it boasts a genre called “Alpha Chill” and threw their phones out the window). There’s a three week trial period if you want to see if it works for you. We may just stick with Faze Action on repeat….