Brain.fm - Focus Music Reviews

With my ADHD, I don’t just have a hard time focusing. External structure and tools to help me maintain focus are important for me and many others with ADHD. Paradoxically, however, the more rigid that structure is, the more stifling and difficult to adhere to, and the more likely it will be to do more harm than good.

I thrive best under fluid structures and systems of time management. For example, I usually work on 25 minute intervals, but on some days, I may find that 7 minute or 3.5 minute intervals are what I need. I was dismayed to find that, not only was I not able to customize how long the timer was, but the five options I had to choose from were prohibitively long. Maintaining focus for 30 minutes is taxing. For 60 minutes? That requires herculean effort. At 90 minutes, I’d begin to lose focus every 30 seconds or so. And 120 minutes? Imagine how your brain would feel after reading the dictionary for six hours straight. That’s me after just two hours of any given office task.

Maybe Brainfm wasn’t designed for my particular variant of ADHD. Maybe it wasn’t designed for ADHD people at all. That’s fine; neurotypical people need focus timer apps too. But I think that, since ADHD people are more likely than most to seek out focusing apps, designing your app to accommodate our challenges by allowing more flexibility and customizability may help a sizeable chunk of your user base.

The concept and execution of the musicscapes to the mood or purpose is very effective. I am using for coding and writing documentation while at home. I use noise cancelling headphones for this to block out city noise. I can work for the full 90 minutes in a very focused and productive manner. It is helping me meet deadlines, so very happy!

I do wish that Brainfm supported landscape mode on the iPhone and, in particular the iPad. I have the latter in a stand horizontally and having to look at the screen sideways isn’t fun.

The other observation is that the tonality of the content appear to be equalized to be bass heavy or the codec is using a lower sample rate. My headphones are reference design and this is quite noticeable compared to say iTunes content. This may be by design as psychoacoustics are probably part of the formula. After 5 minutes I don’t notice, but initially I feel compelled to adjust something. I would be interested to know if this is by design.

I loved Brainfm when it first came out. It was the only one of its kind and you couldn’t beat the binaural and very unique sound quality. I actually raved about it in an E-book I wrote for my online community. It a few updates later, and Brainfm is actually MORE difficult to navigate, bulky, buggy and is actually worse as far as user interface is concerned. The sounds won’t change when tapped, Brainfm crashes, the functionality is not streamlined. I’ve left feedback and asked questions before and gotten no response.

It doesn’t seem like the changes were done with experienced beta testers, otherwise these updates would have not made sense to the experienced user who wants an app to meditate/focus/relax/sleep daily. I am a tech-savvy woman entrepreneur in my 30’s, meditate daily and often have to sleep during odd daytime hours so I use my noise canceling earbuds with a sleep feature to keep out the noises of lawn mowers, doorbells and such.

In my general opinion, I don’t think Brainfm developers are listening to users. I was a paid subscriber for months, maybe almost a year, but since no app updates seemed to improve Brainfm (and things are not getting fixed and are becoming WORSE), I will be canceling my subscription. Such a bummer, too. Maybe I’ll invest in Pzizz.

I'm a paid subscriber. Like many other reviewers have mentioned there have been connectivity issues for a while now. I've had issues with downloading at least 25% of the time. I have used it for sleep. It doesn't seem to be super effective, and having earplugs in for hours can be uncomfortable. I have listened to some binaural beats that were more effective. The focus track seem more effective for me, but I have also had good results just focusing with electronic music without headphones and with binaural beats, with headphones. I've only tried the meditation once but it seemed fairly effective. I like that they have both guided and unguided. Brainfm has some bugs, and there are some things that I find confusing that don't seem to be explained. I've submitted a lot of messages through their 'feedback'. Never received a reply. There is no easy way within Brainfm to contact them. There also seems to be no way within Brainfm to cancel my subscription, which I want to do now because it's not working reliably, citing connectivity issues when nothing else is having problems. I think it has potential, but way too many issues for a paid subscription app.

When Brainfm works it is wonderful. The music for the different moods is a great fit. But if you ever want to listen underground or on a plane or someplace without strong cell signal ... get ready to be angry.

To begin with, Brainfm does not download the various music to your phone in advance. Everything is streamed. If you want to listen to anything offline you must plan in advance and guess what moods you will be in and then try to download the song tracks that you may want. This is an unnecessary pain. The developers could easily include at least 10% of the tracks in Brainfm so that thousands of users will not be left with literally no tracks when we are not actively connected to the net.

And what makes it all worse is that the download process for individual tracks doesn’t seem to work at all and has not for weeks or longer. In order to download a track you need to find it and then open it while connected and then click the download icon in the top right of the screen.

But then prepare yourself to see the icon spinning in a circle forever with no indication of whether anything is downloading or how long is left.

I have tried downloading in half a dozen locations with strong internet and it just never works.

UPDATE AUG 1, 2020 - The newest version of Brainfm is in beta testing and I am a beta tester. The download and listen offline feature works! So, once the new version is released I will update my review.

Brainfm is incredible. By far the best of all the focus / white noise / binaural beats app I’ve tried.

I’ve been using Brainfm daily for over a year now, and it has helped my focus and concentration immensely. The Focus tracks on Brainfm (-Beach Focus and Wind Focus are particularly helpful) have helped me finally get ahold of my ADD / ADHD. With Brainfm, I’m so much better at focusing on my most important tasks & blocking out distractions. It’s a real lifesaver for getting things done at work.

I would agree with the other reviewers that the actual layout of the current app isn’t the best, and I think the old version of Brainfm actually looked more polished and was more intuitive. That being said, the amazing quality of the audio tracks (and my resulting increased productivity) more than makes up for this, and I’m sure the developer will be updating the design of the actual app in the future.

I admit I was super skeptical at first that this would work but after using it a few weeks I have noticed a considerable difference in my focus when I am studying. I will continue to use for the benefits but Brainfm does have one huge glaring problem. When you use Brainfm you cannot set a specific time block and the times are chosen for you. For people like me who use Brainfm for studying this is huge problem. I use the pomodoro method for study and set my study sessions for 4 25 minute sessions which Brainfm doesn’t have. This makes it where I have to set another timer for 25 minutes which completely defeats the purpose of having Brainfm . If I hadn’t seen noticeable differences I would of already dropped Brainfm but since it seems to work well for me I’ll continue to use it although It annoys me every time that I can’t set my own times and I only have a choice of 4 times already pre picked for me that are not of my choosing.

Update:
The developers have made much more improvements to the complaints I had. It’s still a little finicky sometimes when trying to play from outside Brainfm , but the next track button seems to always work now. So I’m updating my review from 1 to 4 stars. Thanks for the fixes!

I really like the focus music but Brainfm is just terrible! It often just stops playing. If you pause the music for just a second you can’t get it to play again unless you go back into Brainfm and hit the Next button. Not even hitting the play button will make it play. You can’t hit play from any of the quick menus on iOS either. I’ve never seen an audio app have so many problems like this! And it’s not a new problem either, it’s been like this since I started a couple months ago. Such blatant problems I would have expected them to be fixed by now! I’ve tried giving feedback but I’ve had no response. I’m about ready to delete it.

I use brain fm primarily at work when I need to get involved in some deep focus heads down work and tune out all of the activity around me (open office plan with about 50 busy colleagues chatting, moving, and meeting all around me). The focus playlists really do an amazing job of helping to drown out all the noise around me without distracting me like music can. White noise always missed the mark for me, but this is perfect. I’ve also listened to the relax playlists when I’m heading to work or winding down after or preping to go into an upcoming meeting that I know will be stressful. Definitely helps get me in a better headspace. And lastly I use the focus or relax playlists also when reading on my commute to drown out passenger and traffic noises (on bus or train). The one failing is the downloadable function which rarely works to allow you play offline.

I’m extremely happy I found Brainfm. I used to just use calming songs through Apple Music to study with my noise cancelling headphones, but since downloading Brainfm, for studying I largely don’t use anything else. I never realized how much background playlists like “nightsounds” and “thunder” helped until I had the chance to use it. It’s extremely less distracting than music (which I would usually need to play quietly) and generally seems to perform better at keeping me focused (I can keep the volume higher so noise cancelling is more effective).

But not only that, the “recharge” playlist is super useful for times where you know you need a nap (as it’d be beneficial) but you just can’t get comfortable enough or relaxed enough to sleep (or at least it’s helpful for me).

The only thing I wish is that all of the playlists had options for unlimited streaming (no timer) rather than mandatorily needing to choose a timer only to have to restart the playlist again when the timer runs out. This is a tad bit frustrating, as it’s rather abrupt to suddenly have the streaming end when one isn’t expecting it. But, overall, it’s not a dealbreaker.

Overall, worth the download and purchase of the subscription, and I’m glad I found Brainfm.

Amazing app that improves focus and feels like it's rewiring my brain. I use this nearly exclusively for focus and meditation...I haven't tried the relaxation, and the sleep doesn't do anything for me, but it's worth the money for the focus and meditation alone. I found myself struggling to do tasks that I found boring, or had other reasons to avoid, and the focus music doesn't feel like it's doing anything, but I just get my work done.
The meditation music, on the other hand, I can feel working. Hard to explain, but when I'm anxious or distracted, I can feel my spinning brain basically get overstimulated and then "give up" and relax. It has changed the way I do tasks even when not listening. Give the free trial a shot, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it's been life-altering for me.

It’s a little unnerving, they seemingly use the same three frequencies and oscillations for every track in it’s category. And it’s not subtle, even on low you can hear the oscillating over whichever track is playing. I’ve listened to frequency and ambient music for years and I’ve never quite felt in-a-twilight-zone-elevator-quietly-drifting-through-an-endless-void like I do with these tracks. They do however have a luxurious feel to them. The sound quality is really clean and soft and you can really feel it surround you. That aspect is what’s relaxing. It feels a little like you’re being pampered -as long as you don’t think too hard about what you’re hearing. As far as focus goes, I feel not much different and I’ve been listening for almost an hour. I feel... somewhat disturbed, as if something bads about to happen. It’s sometimes got an almost impending-doom feel, like dystopia in a crystal clean glass mansion. Good stuff guys, i’ll keep it.

While listening to this music, I become super focused and organized. I like to multitask, but am also easily distracted. Metaphorically chasing 3 rabbits at a time has not worked for me. But I also know that if I give 100% attention to any task at hand (not 98%), I can accomplish anything. Listening to this music with headphones on does just that -- it allows me to bring all of my focus to bear on one thing at a time without fail. An added side effect for me -- I don't think about food while I work, so I snack less, which is yet another distraction avoided. Brainfm also makes it easy to tailor music to your liking and skip over music that you don't care for. I highly recommend Brainfm for those in need of focus help.

Update: Developer reached out to me right after I posted my review below. Pomodoro function in the works everyone! Okkkay... when will we see it and can you PLEASE add white noise to the sleep channel?

Original review: Paid subscriber here. I love Brainfm! They just came out with a revision to Brainfm on the iPhone and the iPad and I love it. It gets me in the mood to study and back run noise when I sleep. I would recommend Brainfm to anyone who is a student and also needs some sort of background noise to sleep with. To the developers, can you please have a strictly 8 hour airplane noise/White Noise selection? All the other options for sleep are not really helping me sleep. That would really convince me that this is a five star app. Added bonus to developers, have a Pomodoro feature added so that I won’t have to use a separate Pomodoro app when I study. Thanks!

Amazing product overall with brilliant functionality online but there’s just no good reason why Brainfm has so many issues. After reviewing other responses it appears that they are well aware of the fact that Brainfm will stop playing the selected music whether streaming or if it’s downloaded. In the offline portion of Brainfm it frequently switches between whichever songs you’ve downloaded or just stops playing altogether with no apparent rhyme or reason.

They usually ask for more info to get to the bottom of the issue but after so many clear concerns with the same problems you’d think they’d get it together. Not sure if they have enough support staff to actually handle the issue yet but I hope they can figure it out. I know it’s probably more complicated than it seems but I’ve never had issues like this with any other paid app that’s been around for a while. Very disappointed but hopeful.

I’m a paid subscriber and the subscription is absolutely worth it. I have adult ADHD and being able to turn on focus was super hard for me. Using Brain FM has given me a tool that allows me to turn on some pleasant sounds or music. They now have a large variety of channels that could be better used to fit the listeners mood. Recently channels like Piano and Grooves were added and both really changed how I listened to the service. I use both web and mobile applications. In the earlier days, the mobile was lagging behind but in the last 6 months, the mobile is very much on par with the web. I genuinely like this service and I’ll keep paying for it. It has really helped me focus on my tasks or relaxes me through the meditation. Totally worth it.

I’ve always had a hard time focusing with any type of background noise (conversation, TV, even music). The binaural beats combined with pleasantly textured repetitive music in Brainfm do two things for me: 1. blocks out distractions, and 2. Melts into back of my mind (so I almost don’t actively know it’s there) and allows my brain to focus entirely on whatever I want. It’s done wonders for me during work, meditation, and sleep. I used to wake up at the slightest sound, now I sleep solidly through the night. It is a very surreal experience and waking up almost feels like coming back from a long relaxing trip to another world. I bought the lifetime subscription. It’s the most I’ve ever paid for a single app but it’s paid itself off in multiple different ways.

Something’s really broken about how Brainfm is coded. I’ve had it for years, and connectivity issues are constant. Find a sound you like? Download it. And never change. Because streaming anything may stop. Pause it? It won’t resume. Skip track? Maybe it’ll work, if you’re lucky.
With the update, now it’s not recognizing my login half the time. The fix? From the help people? Erase and reinstall Brainfm . I’ve done that three times tonight. When it does work, it’s got a shiny new coat of UI—but it’s still hard to navigate. Change your mind about which sleep category you want? Good luck backing out! Oh, and a TINY problem remains: it still loses connection when downloading a track, won’t advance tracks, freezes, forces a new logins... which don’t work, requiring erasure and reinstalling.
The core product is SOLID, but Brainfm needs to be rewritten from the ground up by someone who knows what they’re doing.

Love the new UI design in general, streaming and buffering issues are much better! I also like the “Explore” tab (groups by function sleep, focus etc, sub group (creative, studying, deep focus) and then you can sort by genre of sound you prefer (like rain, ocean, piano).

Brain FM - here’s something I’d like to know more about: for the functional sub groups (like “deep sleep” “guided sleep” “reading/studying”) what is the difference between the tracks provided? I really like being able to see a track name (like “whispering pines”) but since you’re now offering so many different types of experiences I’d like a little more detail about how it works. Are they just playlists of the same material or are they fundamentally different from one another?

When Brainfm works properly it awesome. I genuinely feel a difference in focus and relaxation when listening to the music. Despite the bugs in the software I still use it daily. This company should probably hire some new devs though because there are just unacceptable issues with the software. Biggest problem is just Brainfm randomly pausing, then having to open it back up and start playing it again. Also offline mode is pretty weird. Some of the songs that I have downloaded don’t seem to be available through the explore menu. So somewhere there is a disconnect in categorization. I get the idea of designing an app to be stupid simple but I need just a bit more control over things. Maybe I’d like to relax more than 30 minutes. So I think it’s a worthwhile download for the content rather than the lacking app experience.

I discovered Brainfm when I began using a Muse headband to train myself to relax and to calm my active brain. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how quickly I’ve been able to get to a calm state. My ultimate goal was to hear the voice of GOD speaking to me. I know HE is always communicating with us but we have to learn to still and quiet our mind to hear HIS Still Small Voice. When we learn to listen and actually have an experience with HIM, we are truly blessed with an experience that is indescribable. Words cannot begin to describe the euphoric feeling I’ve experienced in feeling the presence of GOD. I wish the whole entire human civilization could experience this peace that “surpasses all understanding”.

I’ve rated Brainfm 5 stars because I have used it for sleep which was very effective and for Focus also. In using the sounds and music, I have been able to tune out the world (with use of headphones) and use the Brainfm as it was intended, i.e. sleep, meditation, focus, etc. I have found it very useful and effective. I highly recommend Brainfm along with using Brainfm to monitor brain waves which gives visual confirmation to the level of calm I experience.

I love Brainfm. The quality music, the design, etc. There is only one problem with Brainfm—and it’s a big one. The actually playback of the music is very sketchy. If I use Siri, the music pauses and doesn’t continue when I’m done with Siri. If I have my messages round aloud in Messages, the music stops and doesn’t continue when I’m done. Same with dictation. It seems as though if anything interrupts the music, it doesn’t pickup where it left off. So you have to unlock your phone, go to Brainfm , and unpause the music. For how much this cost on annual basis (not a ton more than Disney+), I would expect this basic functionality to be flawless.

Outside of the playback issues, it’s a great app with music that does what they promise.

Having ADD and working from home running a business, where we each work a totally different aspect, has been wonderful! We love what we do and would not give it up for the world. Except … we almost did. Unintentionally. I basically have only done the bare minimum that I had to each day. Customer service was awesome! But marketing, running our website and Etsy shop were dismal. And it caught up with us! And 6 months later I still feel frustrated and unable to do the behind the scenes work. I have taken multiple online teaching courses on marketing in our field, social media, email lists, etc. And many were quite expensive and quite good. Excellent even. But they are useless / until I do the work to implement them. ENTER BRAIN FM! Any day I go without it I get nothing done in these areas. With it I just lose myself in the work. Thank you so much for such a life changing program! I don’t quite understand all the science. But at this point I don’t care. I just know that it works!

When I was younger, I worked with my psychiatrist grandfather, using EEG Neuro-biofeedback to train children with ADHD to avoid symptoms without use of stimulant medication‘s.

We had great success teaching their brains through simple games and an EEG interface. This training allowed suffering children - who were addicted to stimulant medication’s - to control their own brains, electrical activity, on command, moving them from the lower electrical pattern states to the sensory motor rhythm (SMR) and beta ranges that are necessary for normal life and focused work.

It was all the more effective at reducing hyperactivity, which is a shiver response. The brain unconsciously triggers ‘hyperactivity’ when it recognizes it’s electrical activity is insufficient for the tasks it is being asked to perform.

Now, why do I tell you all of this?

Because Brainfm uses essentially the same technology, training your brain via entrainment to self recognize and self regulate the electrical patterns in your brain necessary to maintain focus. This applies equally to relaxation, to sleep, and everything else in your life.

Brainfm is amazing, and I strongly recommended it to anyone, regardless of perceived need or real experience. Brainfm works, and the science is real. Give it a chance and you’ll see for yourself.