ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the enabling effects of listening to recorded music in the context of non-musical everyday activities without formal therapeutic or pedagogic purpose, as is found in music listening during office work, exercising, or travelling, for example. It considers the particular contexts and activities in which we find music, and the enabling effects which arise in them, examined through three specific examples. The chapter reviews the underlying routes by which music enables and offers a new synthesis. It also considers the extent to which music may be "disabling," thereby pointing towards a more critical and reflective psychological approach to understanding music in everyday life. Individual differences in working memory can account for variations between individuals' susceptibility to distraction in the presence of music. Music's ability to reduce perceptions of effort and fatigue in exercise, and consequently to increase work output, endurance and enjoyment, have been construed as a distraction mechanism by researchers in sports psychology.
