Musical Anhedonia: Life Without a Soundtrack

Musical anhedonia is a neurological condition where individuals cannot experience pleasure from music, despite having normal auditory processing and appreciating other rewards. Affecting about 3–5% of people, it is caused by reduced functional connectivity between auditory cortex areas and the brain’s dopaminergic reward system (like the nucleus accumbens).

I recently learned this when I fell down a research rabbit hole online, and it made a lot of things click for me about the way I feel about music. Personally, I've never fully understood what everyone around me was experiencing when listening to music.

Contradictorily, I was in choir for about six years of my adolescence. I do enjoy singing songs, though I don’t necessarily think I have a good voice. I also have the worst stage fright and could never perform alone, separate from a choir. I find singing to be more of a challenge to overcome. I enjoy tackling difficult songs and perfecting notes and rhythms that need practice—it is the satisfaction of a task well done rather than the emotional "payoff" of the melody. Also, I enjoy lyrics and have realized that I have always listened to songs as if they are poetry. The music itself has never invoked emotion for me, but powerful lyrics do. I process the art through the language and the message, while the melody remains a neutral background.

I came to the conclusion that I may experience musical anhedonia after much thought. I work at a retail store and my office is in the corner of the sales floor, so I can hear the radio all day. It’s a quiet corner of the store, but the radio is particularly loud. Since I started working here about three to four years ago, I have always been irritated by the music on the radio stations—even on the rare occasion where they change which one we are listening to—because they play the same songs every hour.

Recently, the song lineup has consisted of many tunes that irritate me. Of course, I don’t judge anybody who likes those songs; everyone is allowed to like what they like. I didn’t mind it at first, but the repetition of the same songs started to genuinely affect my mood. Not because of the emotion that the songs were supposed to invoke, but because I had to hear those songs again. The chorus of the songs already repeats the same word a million times, and then I have to hear the song on many other separate occasions against my will.

When I turned the radio's volume down to a point where it could practically not be heard, I was genuinely happier at work. The next week, someone had noticed what I did and turned it back up, and dare I say louder than before.

This is when I decided to research it. I was so upset, I was on the verge of writing a piece or recording a video about why radio stations need to have more variety in their music.

On my first Google search, a lot of Reddit threads came up. One of which sparked the idea that being forced to listen to repetitive music over and over again could be a form of psychological torture, and I was going to use that as an argument. The more I delved into it, the less it seemed like a valid argument-- so I moved on.

Then, I learned that some radio stations are paid to play certain songs. Radio stations also truly are meant for people who are driving or passively listening and are not made to be played for hours at a time. That said, I know its not always worth the expense, but I think businesses should invest in a Pandora or Spotify account that can play more than 20 songs on repeat.

I was starting to realize that it might just be a "me problem," so I started researching why many songs are irritating, and I was introduced to the concept of musical anhedonia. It was nice to finally read about perspectives that matched mine. Not liking music or concerts can put a damper on conversations sometimes. Lots of people ask, even insist, to learn about others' music taste. That’s great when people have an answer, but I don’t. I was out with someone for the first time once, and they insisted I pick a song to play on the aux. I don’t know or care about music, and they thought I was just trying to be mysterious. Honestly, I’d rather drive in silence, which is a rare minority.

This particular Reddit thread contains some great conversation about it, and I implore you to do your own research. I love this particular person's response:

People have a hard time learning and accepting those who experience life in a different way. That's okay, but it's also necessary to be polite about it. Listen and learn, people don't ask to be the way they are for many aspects of their lives.

There's a lot more professional research about this topic, and a test you can take to see your music enjoyment called the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ). It measures factors like Musical Seeking, Emotion Evocation, Mood Regulation, Sensory-Motor, and Social Reward.

Here's my score.

While most people score high, my results were consistently low across the board, confirming that the neurological "reward" others feel just isn't present for me.

There's a lot that I do not know or experience when it comes to listening to music, and I am okay with that. I love playing podcasts or watching videos/tv shows to fill the silence.

Most importantly, I am super happy that music exists to help with the mental health of everyone who does get to experience the emotions that I don't.