Researchers are increasingly exploring alternative ways to manage anxiety symptoms beyond traditional treatments.
While medication and therapy remain widely used, new approaches are beginning to focus more on accessible, everyday interventions. Among them, music-based therapies are gaining attention for their potential to influence mood and regulate emotions in real time.
A new clinical trial is examining whether something as simple as listening to carefully designed music can help reduce anxiety.
The study was conducted by researchers at Toronto Metropolitan University in collaboration with Lucid, a digital therapeutics company. Led by Danielle Mullen and Frank Russo, the team examined whether a structured audio intervention using music and auditory stimulation could ease anxiety symptoms.
Their work focused on whether this kind of listening session could complement more traditional forms of care.
The researchers studied 144 adults who had moderate trait anxiety and were taking medication for anxiety management.
Participants were split into four groups: one listened to pink noise as a control, while the others listened to music paired with auditory beat stimulation for either 12, 24 or 36 minutes. To measure the effect of each session, participants completed standardized anxiety and mood assessments before and after listening.
Across the trial, the music-based intervention performed better than the control condition in lowering anxiety-related symptoms and reducing negative mood.
The 24-minute session showed the strongest overall anxiety improvement, performing better than the shorter version while producing results similar to those of the 36-minute session.
This pattern suggests there may be an effective middle range where the listening period is long enough to have a meaningful effect without becoming unnecessarily lengthy.
The results suggest that music-based interventions may offer a useful complement to existing anxiety treatments, particularly for people seeking low-cost, accessible support.
The study was conducted entirely online and the sample was limited to adults with moderate trait anxiety who were already taking medication, which may limit the scope of the findings.
