I truly believe that concerts and other live music events make the world a better place. I've yet to find anything that's better than the high of seeing your favorite band in-person, and being able to scream lyrics amidst a huge crowd of people who love music just as much as you do. Tickets can be expensive, lines long, crowds tight and sweaty - but none of that matters the moment a good song starts playing.
My own experiences inspired me to write a piece advocating for the cathartic nature of live music, and amongst my research, I found out something very surprising: concerts can affect your physical health so positively they can actually add years to your life. That's right - years. I won't spoil anything more, so you'll have to scroll down and read on to find out how (Or if you want to be nice and help me get page-views so I look good to my editors, you can read my article on The Odyssey Online site here.)
Enjoy, and let me know what you think about the evidence surrounding live music and the potential health benefits (I don't know about you, but if it's accurate, I'll be living forever.)
Live music is more than just an enjoyable experience - studies show it can benefit your health and even help you live longer.
There are many reasons why someone might attend a concert - maybe their favorite band is headlining, the tickets were really cheap, they want to support local artists, their friends are going, etc. But there's actually another reason to go to a show that's even more important and applicable to everyone yet rarely known: live music provides a multitude of physical health benefits and, according to some scientists, can even help you live longer.
Some positive effects of attending a music gig are plain to see - standing in the crowd while jumping and dancing along to some tunes is obviously beneficial to one's physical health, and singing along to your favorite band either by yourself or with friends is always a fun time. But according to a 2018 study, the benefits go even deeper than that to drastically affect our physical and mental wellbeing, ultimately helping people live longer, happier lives.
A 2018 study from the United Kingdom concluded that attending a concert or another event with live music every two weeks can drastically benefit someone's health, to the point of extending their life expectancy by nine years. Additionally, experts found that spending just 20 minutes at a show is enough to increase feelings of wellbeing and happiness by 21 percent. The study even compared concerts to the effects of wellness activities like yoga and dog-walking and found that the benefits of live music were much, much higher.
The scientists found that grooving along to a live band significantly increased markers along the "happiness spectrum" as well - specifically, a 25 percent increase in feelings of self-worth and feeling close to others, as well as a whopping 75 percent increase in mental stimulation. Similarly, the study found that people who regularly attend music gigs score extremely high when asked about personal happiness, contentment, productivity and self-esteem.
There are even more ways that music has been proven to positively affect our health, most of which we aren't even aware of. Listening to music can be an effective therapeutical treatment for people dealing with mental and emotional stress like trauma or PTSD symptoms. A study of 251 children from ages 8 to 16 found that music therapy helped ease depression by improving levels of self-esteem and decreasing symptoms of depression, even more so than standard therapy could. The same effect was found in a study for people struggling with insomnia, which confirmed that listening to classical music improved students' sleep quality more than listening to an audiobook or complete silence did. Music can even significantly minimize pain and anxiety for patients in surgery.
Based on such well-documented studies and newly found evidence, it seems that both listening to music and attending concerts can help you be the healthiest version of yourself and can even extend your life - as long as you don't get trampled in the mosh pit, that is. And if that's not a convincing reason to go jam out to a live show as much as possible, I don't know what is.
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