Better Than Caffeine — Morning Music to Jumpstart Your Day To

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We all have those mornings when hitting the snooze button is tempting, but it turns out that music could be the remedy to that. According to recent scientific studies, waking up to the right song can energize you in a way that coffee simply can’t. A song’s profile and dynamics can have very different effects on the human brain, but it can’t just be pounding bass in your ears — it’s a delicate balance.

Back in 2015, our friends at Spotify teamed up with psychologist and Cambridge PhD candidate, David M. Greenberg, to create what they called the Perfect “Wake Up” Playlist. Based on their findings, Greenberg and Spotify’s data scientists identified three main elements (according to Business Insider) that your wake up music needs to have:

  • Music that builds: A song that is too vigorous from the start won’t help you get out of bed — it’s too much too soon. Songs that start gently (even just for a few seconds) and then build, help you wake up more gradually.
  • Positivity: Once alert, you need to become motivated for the day to come; positive lyrics can get you out of a grumpy state and shift towards a feel-good attitude.
  • Strong beat: It’s not just the lyrics, it’s also the sonic elements of the music. Songs that emphasize beats 2 and 4 of each measure — usually with the bass and drums —  with a BPM of approximately 100–130 will get you moving and further the feel good mood.

Create Your Own Playlist
Rule of thumb for creating your own morning playlist: look for songs that can carry you through your morning routine with increasingly stronger, more upbeat tracks. Start slow with a song that has a lower BPM, between 100–110, and then gradually introduce tracks with a higher BPM (110–130) as you fill out the playlist and hit your morning stride in beast mode.

You can check out this cool tool called SongBPM to cross check your playlist choices.

Our social media manager Aaron put this trick to work and created a shortlist of tracks for you to consider:

“It Ain’t Me”Kygo feat. Selena Gomez (100 BPM)
“Perfect Places”Lorde (104 BPM)
“Slide”Calvin Harris (104 BPM)
“1234”Feist (110 BPM)
“All I Know”Washed Out (110 BPM)
“Chanel”Frank Ocean (110 BPM)
“Heroes”David Bowie (113 BPM)
“On Hold”The xx (125 BPM)
“Walking On A Dream”Empire of the Sun (127 BPM)
“Pumped Up Kicks”Foster The People (128 BPM)

Listen to Your Wake Up Playlist on Bluesound
Did you know you can use your bedside Bluesound speaker as an alarm clock? I know, becoming a morning person is looking a lot better, right? Here are the steps to make sure that you get up on the right side of your bed, which will soon be whichever side of the bed your Bluesound speaker sits.

  • To get started, select Alarms from the Settings Menu in the lefthand Navigation Drawer.
  • Add a new alarm by selecting + from the header bar and a new Alarm will added for 8:00 am.
  • Not the right time? No problem. Simply tap the Alarm listed.
  • Select Time to adjust the time of your alarm.
  • Select Alarm Sound to choose your music; local playlists, favorite station on TuneIn or saved any other music service stream like Spotify.
  • Tap Repeat to select which days you want the alarm to run. No weekends, please.
  • Duration and Volume can also be adjusted allowing you to set how loud your wake up playlist will play and for how long.
  • Lastly, tap Save on Android, or just return to the <Alarms list on iOS, to save your alarm settings.

Now you’ll start feeling a lot more like this little girl in the morning when those tracks hit.

Have a favorite wake up song that didn’t make our list? Let us know on TwitterFacebook or Instagram.