Pop music and hearing

Abstract

Several factors indicate the possibility of sensorineural hearing loss in connection with pop music. However, very few investigations have examined the hearing in pop musicians and their audience. Sensorineural hearing loss was only demonstrated in 5% of musicians. In our own material, we found a sensorineural hearing loss in 13% defined as a mean pure-tone threshold at 3, 4, 6, and 8 kHz of more than 20 dB HL. The hearing loss was, as expected, correlated with age, duration of exposure, military service, etc. Temporary threshold shift measurements showed that musicians were more resistant to pop music noise than the audience and that female listeners were more resistant than male listeners. The findings leave many interesting questions concerning the relationship between noise and hearing loss.