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Business News Deals Digital
Universal Music partners on music app for people affected by dementia
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 13 June 2022
Universal Music last week announced a partnership with music wellness technology firm Music Health. The deal sees the former provide its catalogue to an app developed by the latter called Vera, which is described as “an intuitive music intervention tool designed for the care of people affected by dementia”.
The alliance follows Universal UK’s recent backing of a new online platform that provides information about the use of music in healthcare. That was announced alongside ‘The Power Of Music’, the recent report from UK Music and Music For Dementia that championed the use of music to improve the lives of people living with dementia, depression and other debilitating conditions.
Music Health says that its Vera app “analyses the age of the dementia affected person, where they grew up, and how they react to certain music. It uses these criteria to autonomously curate the right songs at the right times to effectively manage the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. Vera curates songs from UMG’s unrivalled catalogue, the world’s largest, most diverse and culturally rich collection of blues, classical, country, folk, jazz, pop, R&B, reggae, rock n roll, soul and soundtracks”.
As the Universal/Vera partnership was announced, Grace Meadows from Music For Dementia noted that the app responds to research that was referenced in the ‘Power Of Music’ report.
She said: “Research shows that music is much more impactful for people living with dementia when it holds meaning and is associated with moments from someone’s life. In our report, which sets out how we can be harnessing the power of music more to support health and wellbeing, we emphasised the need for a personalised approach to embedding music in health and social care, and the Vera app helps carers to do that”.
Commenting on the partnership from Universal’s side, Michael Nash, EVP of Digital Strategy at the major, added: “From rigorous workouts to peaceful meditation to restorative sleep cycles, music is deeply integrated into numerous innovations promoting health and wellbeing”.
“Now, scientists are finding that music is also a powerful tool for helping those suffering from the effects of dementia and memory loss”, he went on. “At UMG, we are working with a wide range of companies to develop therapeutical applications of music and we’re proud to partner with Music Health on Vera to help improve the lives of so many around the world”.
