Composed for a purpose. Built on evidence.
Sotuno follows a handful of production rules that research on music, attention and sleep keeps pointing to. Here is what they are, which studies stand behind them, what those studies do not show, and how we are closing the gaps with research of our own.
Music you put on to do something else.
Ordinary music is written to be listened to. It wants your attention: a chorus to wait for, a drop, a voice telling a story. Functional music is written for the opposite job. It sets a stable frame for a task and then stays out of the way, for as long as the task takes.
That is not a genre but a set of production rules. Every Sotuno session, whether Focus, Relax, Sleep or Meditate, is composed, arranged and mixed to the same four principles, and ADHD mode tunes them for minds that need more input.
Steady tempo
No drops, no builds, no surprises. A stable pulse is easier for the brain to file away as background.
No vocals
Words in music compete with words in your head. Every Sotuno track is purely instrumental.
Tuned modulation
Textures evolve over minutes, not seconds. ADHD mode raises the modulation rate and depth for more drive.
Long sessions
Composed for 25 minutes to several hours in one piece. No gaps, no album breaks, no "up next".
Six findings that shaped every session.
These are the published studies our production rules rest on. We name them, we say what they found, and we say how strong the evidence is. Where it is thin, we say that too.
Lyrics are the reliable distractor
A meta-analysis of 65 studies found that intelligible speech and music with lyrics have a small but reliable negative effect on reading, and that lyrical music and speech disrupt most. This is the best-supported rule we follow: every Sotuno session is instrumental.
Vasilev, Kirkby & Angele, 2018, Perspectives on Psychological Science
Steady sound disrupts less than changing sound
Classic work on short-term memory showed that simple, repetitive sound does not produce the disruption that changing sound does. Acoustic variability is what pulls attention. That is why our textures move over minutes, with no drops and no breaks.
Jones, Madden & Miles, 1992, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Music works through arousal and mood
The famous "Mozart effect" disappeared once arousal and mood were controlled: music helps by changing how alert and how positive you feel, and faster tempo raises arousal. Functional music uses that lever deliberately, with energy levels from calm to driving.
Thompson, Schellenberg & Husain, 2001, Psychological Science; Husain, Thompson & Schellenberg, 2002, Music Perception
Stimulation helps attention in ADHD, a little
A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 randomised trials found that young people with ADHD or attention problems performed slightly better with white or pink noise in the background, while people without attention problems performed slightly worse. Small effect, consistent direction, and the reason ADHD mode is a separate, adjustable switch.
Nigg et al., 2024, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Rapidly modulated music and sustained attention
A 2024 study reported that music with amplitude modulation around 16 times per second helped participants with more self-reported ADHD symptoms stay on a sustained-attention task, with brain activity locking onto the modulation. Early, company-funded and not yet independently replicated, but the only work of its kind, and the reason our modulation rates sit where they do.
Woods et al., 2024, Communications Biology
Music improves how people rate their sleep
A Cochrane review of 13 randomised trials with about 1,000 adults found moderate-certainty evidence that listening to music at bedtime improves self-rated sleep quality. Objectively measured sleep may not change, and masking of room noise has the best support as the mechanism. Our Sleep mode is built as a quiet, even sound bed for exactly that.
Jespersen et al., 2022, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; Dickson & Schubert, 2019, Sleep Medicine
Averages hide people. Meta-analyses of background music in general populations find zero-to-negative average effects, and responses to sound differ from person to person, which is why every Sotuno mode has an energy level, ADHD mode has a dial, and early access is free: the only study that settles it for you is your own.
Composed by people who bring science and music together.
Rules are not enough. Music that holds a state for two hours without becoming wallpaper takes craft. We work with established artists who connect research and craft with real passion, and who use music to concentrate themselves. Every session is composed, played and mixed by hand. No AI-generated music. We are finalising the first collaborations now and will introduce the artists before launch.
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Established artists
Musicians and producers with a track record, who understand both the studio and the science behind the rules.
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Made by hand, not by a model
Software helps us arrange, extend and mix sessions to length, the way any producer works. It never composes for us.
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Checked against the rules
Every piece is measured against the production rules on this page before it goes into a library: tempo, modulation, absence of vocals, transitions.
We are preparing medical studies for 2027.
Most of the research on this page was done in short lab sessions, much of it with children. We want to know how functional music holds up in adult everyday life, over weeks, for focus, for people with ADHD traits and for sleep, and we are preparing studies with clinical partners to find out. Results will be published here, whatever they show.
Practices, clinics, researchers and people who would like to take part or learn more can write to us:
info@kiwimo.comNo obligation, no sales pitch. We reply personally and will keep you informed as the studies take shape.
Built on evidence. Clear about the limits.
German rules on health-related advertising are strict, and we think that is right. So, in plain words:
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Sotuno is a wellness product for everyday routines, not a medical device.
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It does not diagnose, treat or cure any condition and is no substitute for medical advice or for care you receive.
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Effects differ from person to person. What helps one listener concentrate may do nothing for another, and our modes and dials exist so you can find your own level.
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We cite only studies we have read and can stand behind, and we put numbers on effects only when the studies do.
Science, explained
The questions people ask when they want to know what is behind the music.
No. There is overlap in sound, but not in purpose. Lo-fi and ambient are genres you listen to. Functional music is defined by what it is for: it follows production rules such as a steady tempo, no vocals and controlled modulation so that it can stay in the background for a whole session. Some ambient music fits those rules, much of it does not.
Not as a blanket claim, and we do not make one. Published research supports the rules we follow: no lyrics, steady sound, arousal through tempo, more stimulation for people with attention difficulties. Whether a given session helps you depends on the task and on you. Our own studies, planned for 2027, will test Sotuno itself.
The evidence for binaural beats is mixed at best: several EEG studies found no reliable brain-wave effect, and the one trial in children with ADHD found no benefit for inattention. Sotuno does not use binaural beats. Where we use amplitude modulation, it sits directly in the music, which studies show drives measurable neural phase-locking more strongly than binaural beats.
Nobody has measured that for functional music, so we do not claim it. Dopamine appears in the theory behind why stimulation helps attention in ADHD, and one imaging study found dopamine release during peak emotional moments to favourite songs. Neither justifies a claim about background music for work.
From established artists who bring science and music together, working to our production rules. Sessions are composed, played and mixed by people. Software helps arrange, extend and mix them to the required length. No AI-generated music.