Heavy metal fans are the mostly likely of any genre to have had a sexual experience in a car, according to a survey by TickPick about music habits while in automobiles. 75 percent of heavy metal listeners have experienced a sexual encounter in a vehicle, as opposed to 65 percent of all respondents, and ahead of fans of oldies music, hip-hop, rap and R&B/soul. Music of choice for car-sex - R&B and soul in over 27 percent of the time, metal 12.6 percent.

Plant enthusiasts are opening channels of communication with their plants through bio-sonification devices like Music of the Plants and PlantWave, conducted in the trending language of ambient noise. The resulting plant music is used in a variety of ways – mixed into songs, as background sounds in yoga studios, or as installations in art galleries. NPR is wondering what does it mean to have plants "playing music", and, indeed, should we take it as music, since these sounds aren't made intentionally by the plant to communicate. The article suggests people should try to stay away from anthropomorphizing the plants too much - the imposition of a human scale and pitch allows us to be more aware that plants are living, but it might make us think they feel like us, even when they don't.

500 parents and music listeners took part in TickPick survey, which looked into how parents influenced the music taste of their children. 64% of parents said they attempted to influence the music their child enjoys, and just slightly smaller portion of parents (58%) were concerned with the appropriateness of the music their children listen to. Children were exposed to explicit Researches music at 12,5 years old, and first heard their future favourite band at 13. Ten following factors are the most important in determining a young music fan’s taste: radio, movies, father, mother, friends, siblings, TV, concerts and festivals, social media, and finally hobbies and interests.

The use of words related to negative emotions, in English-language popular songs at least, has increased by more than one third in the last 50 years, an analysis of lyrics of more than 150,000 songs has shown. Let’s assume an average of 300 words per song, every year there are 30,000 words in the lyrics of the top-100 hits. In 1965, around 450 of these words were associated with negative emotions, whereas in 2015 their number was above 700. Words associated with positive emotions decreased in the same time period - there were more than 1,750 positive-emotion words in the songs of 1965 and only around 1,150 in 2015. The tempo and the tonality of pop songs also changed - hits have become slower, and minor tonalities have become more frequent. No definitive explanation, just assumptions - less centralised record industry, societal changes...

Melodic alarms playing from clocks in the morning could improve alertness levels, with harsh alarm tones linked to increased levels of morning grogginess. Lead author, RMIT doctoral researcher Stuart McFarlane, said morning grogginess, or sleep inertia, was a serious problem in our 24-hour world, adding - “you would assume that a startling ‘beep beep beep’ alarm would improve alertness, but our data revealed that melodic alarms may be the key element. This was unexpected". So, some nice music first thing in the morning!

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany analysed 80,000 different chord progressions from 745 songs, using machine learning to give a score to each chord based on how “surprising” it was compared to the chord preceding it, Newsweek reports. Chord sequences were then played to 39 volunteers, stripped of lyrics and melody to make […]

Neuroscience News reminds of some of the health benefits of heavy metal music: heavy metal fans are happier in their youth and better adjusted in middle age compared to their non-fan counterparts; fans who were made angry and then listened to heavy metal music did not increase their anger but increased their positive emotions (seems […]