NEW YORK — Music tuned to 432 hertz is gaining popularity on social media platforms and streaming services, with users reporting personal benefits despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting its purported healing properties. The trend involves tuning the A above middle C to vibrate at 432 hertz instead of the standard 440 hertz, producing a slightly lower and, to some listeners, warmer sound.

Proponents of 432 hertz music claim it aligns with nature or can reduce blood pressure, and an increasing number of tracks and playlists using this tuning are available online, including meditation soundscapes and reggae songs by Ziggy Marley. Yoselin Sanchez, who provides telehealth services for a healthcare management organization in California and lives with chronic pain from cervical scoliosis, frequently listens to 432 hertz house music while working. “Music is medicine. Sound is medicine.” “It helps me focus and be engaged with the patient I’m assisting, and it also helps me relax.”

Sanchez also explores other alternative frequencies like 528 hertz and 963 hertz and emphasizes personal experience over universal claims. “When it comes to music, it could activate different feelings in people, the vibrations of it. It’s not like a one-size-fits-all.”

However, experts caution against attributing special qualities to 432 hertz. Susan Rogers, a Berklee College of Music professor emeritus and former sound engineer for Prince, dismissed the idea that this frequency holds unique power. “There are frequencies going on right now that are higher than what we can hear and lower than what we can hear. And they’re not special because they’re one of the billions and billions of frequencies that we’re receiving right now.” She added, “To set one aside and say that it is the frequency of the universe is, as far as the science community is concerned, nonsense.”

Rogers also noted that many modern instruments were designed to sound best at 440 hertz. “Some of those instruments might sound a little sweeter, but it’s likely that most won’t.” Historically, tuning standards varied widely until 1939, when an international agreement established 440 hertz as the norm. Fanny Gribenski, a music historian at New York University, explained that earlier advocacy for lower tunings was rooted in preserving vocal ranges and historical compositions, not mystical properties. “For most of music history, people are just singing within their own vocal range.” “The idea that it should be mainly a lower frequency than the ones that were in use at the time is really the cultural concern for protecting music from the past, protecting the voices of singers.” “I wonder if there is a sense of deceleration, slowing down slightly, and also taking one step down from the bright sounds of modernity.”