Music consistently lowers testosterone in men rather than raising it, which is the opposite of what most people expect when they search this question. Across several studies spanning more than two decades, the pattern holds: listening to music tends to push male testosterone down and female testosterone up. The effect is real enough to replicate, but the shifts are modest, and the science behind why it happens at all is more interesting than the headline finding.
What the Studies Actually Found
The most cited research on music and testosterone comes from a pair of findings that surprised even the investigators. In a study published in Neuroendocrinology Letters, researchers measured salivary testosterone before and after music listening and found a statistically significant sex difference: music decreased testosterone in males while increasing it in females.1PubMed. The effects of music and visual stress on testosterone and cortisol in men and women A separate paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences reported the same split, with highly significant results in both directions.2Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Music and Testosterone
A 2023 review in Frontiers in Psychology that examined the accumulated literature confirmed the pattern, noting that a relatively large number of studies have looked at this question in healthy subjects, and the results are consistent: music listening affects testosterone, but in opposite directions depending on sex.3Frontiers in Psychology. Testosterone, oxytocin and co-operation: A hypothesis for the origin and function of music So if you are a man hoping to use your workout playlist to pump up testosterone along with your biceps, the research points in the wrong direction. And if you are a woman, the uptick is real but subtle.
The Preference Factor
One wrinkle worth noting is whether the type of music matters. A pilot study tested this directly by having participants listen to both music they personally found thrilling and music they disliked. In men, testosterone declined regardless of whether they liked the music. In women, testosterone rose when they listened to music they found deeply pleasurable but actually fell when they listened to music they disliked.4PubMed Central. Influence of music on steroid hormones and the relationship between receptor polymorphisms and musical ability: a pilot study The catch is that these differences did not reach statistical significance in this particular study, likely because only 21 people participated. The direction of the effects, though, matched what larger studies had found.
This suggests that for women, the emotional quality of the listening experience may matter more than simply having sound playing. For men, the testosterone-lowering effect seems relatively indiscriminate: it happens with music they love and music they find unpleasant. That is a curious detail. It hints that whatever mechanism is at work in men, it is triggered by the act of listening to structured sound itself rather than by pleasure or arousal.
Why the Opposite Direction in Men and Women
Nobody has a definitive explanation for the sex split, but there are a few working ideas. One line of thinking ties it to how music engages the body’s stress systems. Music listening generally lowers cortisol, the primary stress hormone, in both sexes.1PubMed. The effects of music and visual stress on testosterone and cortisol in men and women In men, testosterone and cortisol sometimes move in tandem during relaxation states: when the body shifts out of a fight-or-flight mode, both can dip together. In women, the hormonal crosstalk is different, partly because testosterone is produced in smaller quantities and regulated through somewhat different feedback loops.
A more speculative evolutionary hypothesis, outlined in the 2023 Frontiers in Psychology paper, frames music as fundamentally cooperative behavior. The idea is that music listening and music-making evolved as social bonding activities, and lowering testosterone in men could reduce competitive and aggressive tendencies, facilitating group cohesion. Meanwhile, the slight rise in women might relate to a different set of social signaling pathways.3Frontiers in Psychology. Testosterone, oxytocin and co-operation: A hypothesis for the origin and function of music This remains a hypothesis, not established fact, but it offers a framework for thinking about why the two sexes respond so differently to the same stimulus.
Music During Exercise
A lot of the popular interest in music and testosterone comes from athletes and gym-goers who believe aggressive music revs up their hormones before competition or training. The reality is more nuanced. One study examining crossover music played during physical exercise found that music affected the balance between cortisol and testosterone secretion, and the overall effect was to reduce physiological stress and increase relaxation rather than to amp up aggression or competitive drive.5AIP Conference Proceedings. The physiological effects of campursari (crossover music genre) allegro in sports on circulating cortisol and testosterone levels
This fits with the broader pattern. Music helps exercisers by lowering perceived effort, reducing cortisol-driven stress, and making the experience more enjoyable. But the hormonal mechanism behind those benefits is not a testosterone surge. If anything, the testosterone shift during exercise with music parallels the resting-state findings: a calming influence on the hormonal landscape rather than an activating one. You might lift more because you feel better and less stressed, not because your testosterone spiked.
Group Singing Is Its Own Animal
Listening to music passively and actively making music are different experiences, so it is worth asking whether singing together does something different to testosterone. A study on group singing measured oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone in participants before and after choral singing sessions. The oxytocin results were interesting, and cortisol showed clear changes, but when the researchers looked at testosterone in male participants, they found no significant effect.6PubMed Central. Endogenous oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone in response to group singing The researchers themselves noted that the testosterone analysis was underpowered, meaning the study simply did not have enough male participants to detect a small change if one existed.
Active music-making involves motor coordination, social interaction, and emotional engagement that passive listening does not. It is plausible that the testosterone response differs between the two, but the current evidence does not give us a clear answer on that front. What we can say is that there is no evidence that singing in a group boosts testosterone in men.
Do Musicians Have Different Baseline Testosterone
Beyond the acute effects of listening, researchers have asked whether people who spend years immersed in music end up with different resting hormone levels. A study comparing music students to non-music students found a suggestive pattern: female music students showed a trend toward higher testosterone levels than their non-musician peers, with an average of about 97 versus 75 picograms per milliliter. For men, there was essentially no difference between music and non-music students.7PLOS ONE. Relationships among Musical Aptitude, Digit Ratio and Testosterone in Men and Women
The female trend did not quite reach standard statistical significance, and the study design cannot tell us whether studying music raised testosterone or whether women with slightly higher testosterone were drawn to music in the first place. Still, it is an intriguing echo of the acute listening findings, where women consistently show testosterone increases. A review in Frontiers in Neuroscience noted a related observation: female composers have been found to show above-average testosterone, and male composers below-average testosterone, which has prompted discussion about whether a more androgynous hormonal profile is linked to musical creativity.8Frontiers in Neuroscience. Music-Evoked Emotions—Current Studies The idea is provocative, though the data behind it is still thin.
The 528 Hz Claims
If you have spent any time in wellness or biohacking communities, you have probably encountered claims about specific sound frequencies that supposedly optimize hormone production. The frequency most often cited for testosterone is 528 Hz, sometimes called the “love frequency” or a “Solfeggio frequency.” There is one laboratory study behind this claim, and it was conducted in rats, not humans. Researchers exposed rats to 528 Hz sound waves at 100 decibels and found increased testosterone production in brain tissue, along with reduced anxiety-related behavior.9PubMed. Influence of various intensities of 528 Hz sound-wave in production of testosterone in rat’s brain and analysis of behavioral changes
A few things are worth keeping in mind here. First, 100 decibels is extremely loud, roughly the volume of a chainsaw or a rock concert at close range. Sustained exposure at that level causes hearing damage in humans. Second, the study measured testosterone production in brain tissue directly, not circulating blood levels, and the mechanisms of local hormone production in brain cells do not straightforwardly translate to the kind of testosterone increase you would notice in a blood test. Third, and most fundamentally, rats are not humans. Rodent neuroscience findings fail to replicate in people more often than they succeed. The leap from “a very loud tone changed gene expression in rat brain tissue” to “listening to 528 Hz music boosts your testosterone” is enormous, and the intermediate evidence does not exist yet.
Testosterone Shapes Birdsong, Not the Other Way Around
An interesting piece of context comes from the animal kingdom, where the relationship between hormones and vocalization runs in the opposite direction from what most people assume. In songbirds, testosterone does not rise because the bird hears music. Instead, testosterone drives the bird to sing. Research on black redstarts showed that males with blocked testosterone receptors produced songs with different acoustic properties during territorial challenges compared to males with normal hormone function.10PLOS ONE. Testosterone Affects Song Modulation during Simulated Territorial Intrusions in Male Black Redstarts (Phoenicurus ochruros) A broader review of the birdsong literature found that testosterone acts on specific brain regions to regulate the motivation to sing, while different aspects of song quality are shaped by long-term testosterone exposure in other brain areas and in the vocal organ itself.11Hormones and Behavior. The regulation of birdsong by testosterone: Multiple time-scales and multiple sites of action
The relevance to humans is indirect but illuminating. In nature, the primary causal arrow runs from testosterone to musical output, not from music to testosterone. Birdsong is, in a sense, a testosterone product. When we ask whether listening to music changes testosterone in humans, we are asking about a feedback loop that seems to run backward from the ancestral function. It is not that music “should” raise testosterone based on evolutionary precedent. If anything, the evolutionary story predicts what the human studies actually find: that the relationship is complicated and does not simply go in the direction the fitness industry assumes.
Why the Evidence Remains Frustratingly Thin
One honest assessment of this field is that the studies are small and the methodology is hard to get right. The pilot study that tested preferred versus disliked music had only 21 participants.4PubMed Central. Influence of music on steroid hormones and the relationship between receptor polymorphisms and musical ability: a pilot study The group singing study acknowledged being underpowered for testosterone detection.6PubMed Central. Endogenous oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone in response to group singing Most studies use salivary testosterone, which is convenient but captures only the free fraction of the hormone and is sensitive to recent food intake, time of day, and even how recently someone brushed their teeth.
Timing introduces another complication. Testosterone fluctuates substantially across the day, peaking in the morning and declining through the afternoon. Researchers who study music and hormones know they need to standardize collection times to avoid confounding their results with normal daily rhythms.12Frontiers in Physiology. Salivary Testosterone and Cortisol Levels in Tunisian Elderly Male Patients With Mild Alzheimer’s Disease. Implications of Musical Therapy And/Or Physical Rehabilitation Not every study handles this perfectly, and even when timing is controlled, a 15-minute listening session may produce a hormonal shift so small that it falls within the noise of natural fluctuation.
The field also lacks a large-scale meta-analysis that pools all the available data, standardizes effect sizes, and gives a definitive estimate of how much testosterone changes and under what conditions. What we have instead is a collection of individually small studies that tend to point in the same direction. The direction is consistent enough to be credible, but the magnitude of the effect and the practical significance remain open questions.
Music and the Autonomic Nervous System
Understanding why music affects hormones at all requires a brief look at how sound interacts with the body’s regulatory systems. Music does not just enter through the ears and stop at conscious perception. It entrains heart rate, modulates breathing patterns, and shifts the balance between the sympathetic nervous system, which handles alertness and stress, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which handles rest and recovery.13Cambridge University Press. Dance of the Hormones to the Beat of the Music When parasympathetic activity increases, the entire hormonal milieu shifts in ways that favor recovery over competition. Cortisol drops, and in men, testosterone appears to follow.
This autonomic pathway helps explain why the testosterone change during music listening is not about “pumping you up.” Even aggressive, fast-tempo music engages the body’s regulatory systems in ways that may, on balance, lean toward parasympathetic engagement simply because the listener is seated, safe, and attending to structured sound rather than dealing with a real threat. The relaxation is physiological, happening below the level of conscious experience, even if the listener feels energized or emotionally aroused by the music.
Practical Takeaways for Different Groups
If you are a man trying to raise your testosterone through lifestyle changes, music listening is not the tool for that job. The evidence consistently shows it nudges testosterone downward in males, though the effect is small enough that it should not stop you from enjoying your playlists. No one is going to develop clinically low testosterone because they listen to too much music. The shift is real but modest, on par with the kind of fluctuation you would see from eating a meal or having a conversation.
If you are a woman, the picture is slightly more encouraging in the direction you might hope, but the magnitude is similarly modest. Listening to music you genuinely enjoy could provide a very slight testosterone uptick, which in women is associated with things like energy, confidence, and libido. Whether the shift is large enough to produce a noticeable subjective change is unclear from the existing data.
If you are an athlete using music before competition, the benefit is real but hormonal in a different way than you might think. Music helps primarily by lowering cortisol and stress, which improves performance through better mood, lower perceived exertion, and reduced anxiety. Framing this as a testosterone boost mischaracterizes the mechanism. You perform better with music not because you are more hormonally aggressive, but because you are more relaxed and focused.
And if you have encountered claims that specific frequencies like 528 Hz can optimize your testosterone, treat those with serious skepticism. The single study behind the claim used rats at damaging sound levels, measured brain tissue rather than blood, and has never been replicated in humans. The wellness industry has a habit of taking a single animal study and spinning it into a product recommendation, and this is a textbook example of that pattern.