Music from Nova Sounds.
Nova Focus is made by Nova Sounds, a focus-music label in Stockholm. These are our playlists: press play and leave one running under a timer. Below them, six sounds generated right in your browser.
Playlists on Spotify
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About 28 min
Ambient
Slow ambient pieces with piano, drones, strings and nature textures; tagged Deep Focus. A few tracks lean dark in mood.
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About 35 min
Noise
Brown, pink, white and nature noise with no melody at all, for when any music is too much.
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About 25 min
Lo-Fi
Relaxed lo-fi beats with a steady pulse; includes some sleepy and seasonal tracks.
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About 25 min
Classical
Calm classical pieces for piano and guitar, including some hymns and seasonal pieces.
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About 24 min
Electronic
Lounge, synthwave, soft and deep house and drum & bass: the higher-energy option in the archive.
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About 39 min
Jazz
Smooth jazz for piano and band; easygoing, better for light work and breaks than for dense reading.
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Not for focus
Lullabies
Music box and piano lullabies made for winding down and sleep, not for focus sessions.
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Not for focus
Covers
Acoustic and bossa nova covers of familiar songs; includes vocal tracks, so not lyric-free.
The player loads only when you press play. Logged in to Spotify, you hear full tracks; logged out, 30-second previews. Open a playlist in Spotify to follow it.
Calm music for a timer
Each playlist ends about when its timer does, so the music stops just before the chime.
Generated sound, free
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Rain
Steady rain on a window, with a soft low rumble.
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Café
Distant conversation and the odd cup. No words to follow.
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Brown noise
Deep and soft, weighted to the low end. Like a distant waterfall.
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Pink noise
Even across octaves. Warmer than white, brighter than brown.
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White noise
Flat hiss that covers speech best. Keep it quiet.
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Green noise
Our take on green noise: pink noise centred near 500 Hz. A soft, even hum.
Tip: start low. A steady sound works best just loud enough to cover the room. Pair it with the 25/5 Pomodoro timer or a 1 hour timer.
Does noise help you focus?
For some people, yes, a little. The research is small and mixed. A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 studies found a small benefit of white and pink noise on lab attention tasks for young people with ADHD or many ADHD symptoms, and a small negative effect for people without them. It found no studies of brown noise at all.
An earlier study reported the same split: noise helped memory in children with ADHD and made it worse in the comparison group. So treat noise as a preference to test, not a treatment. If it feels distracting, turn it off. Keep the volume low, and take breaks from headphones.
More on this: brown vs pink vs white noise, brown noise and ADHD focus, and lofi vs ambient music for focus.
Comparing paid focus-music apps? Read a free Brain.fm alternative and an Endel alternative.