Pandemic economy continues to shape local startup industry in 2022

Funding for Romanian startups might reach EUR 200 million this year as more specialised investors could appear on the local market. Trends that have emerged since the beginning of the pandemic will continue to shape the development of the local startup ecosystem this year, while the ongoing digitalization of businesses will generate fresh demand for innovative products and services launched by Romanian entrepreneurs.

By Ovidiu Posirca

Funding volumes for Romanian startups might top EUR 200 million this year

Last year’s biggest funding deal was closed by FintechOS, the Romanian startup developing a digital banking and insurance platform. The company got USD 60 million in Series B funding last spring to consolidate its presence in Europe and expand to new markets. Meanwhile, the biggest investment attracted by a startup with Romanian roots belonged to UiPath. The Robotic Process Automation startup got USD 750 million in funding before going public.

DIGITAL AND DATA MANAGEMENT DRIVING PANDEMIC ECONOMY

targeting Romania, suggests Dan Mihaescu, Founding Partner of GapMinder VC. He estimates that some Romanian-born startups could attract between EUR 110 - 150 million in 2022.

“We also expect a sheer increase in volumes at all levels this year: the two major angel investor associations should become even

more active and attract new members; and the same will happen with the two crowdfunding platforms. New accelerator-type funds might emerge as part of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) towards the end of the year, and a couple of new early-stage funds might also appear,” Mihaescu told BR.

Meanwhile, Andrei Dudoiu, managing partner & president of the Board of Directors banking,” Dudoiu told BR. Startups are also supported by Romania’s position as an outsourcing market for banking and fintech software development.

“Romania has consolidated its position as a world class technology hub in the past five years, and this was acknowledged by the EU when Bucharest was picked as the host of the European Cybersecurity Competence environment could be disrupted by the persistent inflationary pressure and the moves by central banks across the continent to hike interest rates.

OMERS Ventures managing partner Harry Briggs estimates that startups and investors should expect the rate of growth in capital invested to be slower this year than in 2021.

“There are still huge opportunities and

money to be made, but we're starting to see a re-rating of the stock market and of some tech companies. And if interest rates rise as expected, people will not be searching for yield quite as desperately as before,” said Briggs, according to pitchbook.com. Europe has already consolidated its position as one of the most influential markets for startups, with significant growth potential. Some 65 European cities had at least one startup with a valuation topping USD 1 billion. The distribution is spread wider than in the US, where there are 42 cities with unicorn startups, according to a report by dealroom.co.

at crowdfunding platform SeedBlink, expects the volume of seed investments (up to Series B rounds) to more than double and hopefully exceed EUR 200 million, compared to the estimated EUR 85 million in 2021.

He explains that in just two years, the pandemic crisis has also led to rising risk levels associated with internet use, which translates to saturation and a push for more effective cybersecurity solutions. In turn, this has generated opportunities for new entrepreneurial endeavours.

“The pandemic has determined an accelerated integration of ‘digital’ and ‘data management’ into business operations – we’re seeing the growth of ecommerce, remote work and collaboration, leisure, entertainment, learning, healthcare activities, as well as the automation of realworld activities, with major innovations in supply chain management, logistics, and Centre. This dynamic has a tremendous positive impact on the local startup scene, opening our market up to more investment opportunities, which in turn will contribute to more growth and focused development,”

Alexandru Balaci, the CEO of fintech Revo Technologies Romania, tells BR.

This all comes after a year in which funding across Europe reached a record of USD 121 billion, according to Atomico data. Seed and angel investments alone totalled USD 8.4 billion, while early-stage rounds amounted to around USD 34 billion. But the investment TRENDS TO WATCH FOR ROMANIAN FOUNDERS

remains quite fragile, which translates into a limited number of startups that are actually

interesting for active investors in a particular market, suggests Ionut Tata, CEO of the Iceberg+ consultancy and leader of entrepreneurship taskforce in the Coalition for Romania's Development. He adds that energy and cleantech are some of the sectors with maturing startups that have started showing not only promising valuations, but also interesting returns on investment (ROI).

According to Tata, founders should also be aware of the increased availability of public funding, including direct funding from the EU, which will support startups and ease management operations in bureaucratic terms.

“The first step has already been taken as .Lumen received over EUR 9 million through the European Innovation Council (EIC). We should look at this as being only the tip of the iceberg, since there are up to 25 other Romanian startups at a similar level of eligibility and competitiveness that just need to make a move towards the EIC,” the CEO told BR. The Cluj-based startup secured EU funding to develop glasses for the blind with a technology that is able to understand the environment and give feedback using sound and impulses.

Dudoiu of SeedBlink adds that AgriTech is one industry vertical that has the potential to grow further in CEE. “I also see blockchain

technology and the gaming industry getting hot in the near future,” he says.

PUSHING FOR GROWTH IN 2022

The outlook for this year is positive, with

startup fund representatives telling BR that they will continue to search for promising startups that can scale up fast.

Speaking about GapMinder’s targets for this year, Mihaescu says he is both optimistic and cautious as the fund continues to focus on B2B startups in the deeptech niche.

“We have been at the end of this macro-

cycle for 3-4 years already, and meanwhile it remains unclear how we should be co-existing with the pandemic on the long run, and inflation is starting to hit various economies in different ways,” he explains.

The fund aims to invest about EUR 10 million in a number of rounds to support exiting portfolio companies and new startups.

His advice for startup founders in the pandemic economy is to “be very careful on betting everything on totally replacing

something rather than substantially improving existing models.”

“The same can be said about thinking everything will go back to normal in a couple of quarters,” he adds.

Elsewhere, Revo Technologies is looking to develop in key markets across Central and Eastern Europe. The fintech plans to expand its partnerships with retailers, e-commerce platforms, and payment service providers.

“As for Romania, we intend to continue expanding our business based on our leading position on this market. The plan is to invest in building partnerships with top Romanian and international traders that operate in Central and Eastern Europe and to collaborate with top e-commerce payment services providers,” says Balaci.

After recording an investment volume growth of 400 percent in 2021, SeedBlink remains committed to the most funded verticals, ranging from enterprise software to SaaS, EdTech, and FinTech.

Dudoiu explains that growth drivers for Romanian innovation include data-driven customer experiences, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, and decentralised finance.

“We continue to improve our scouting and vetting processes to create more opportuni-

ties for the investment community. We are expanding our network of European partners, VCs (venture capitalists) and Angels to support startups as co-investors and provide them with new opportunities for upcoming rounds. We are also developing our state-ofthe-art proprietary technology that will help investors with knowledge and education as

well as with better communication and engagement between founders and shareholders,” says SeedBlink’s managing partner.

EUROPE’S GROWING PROFILE IN THE GLOBAL STARTUP INDUSTRY

One parameter that gauges the competitiveness of an economy is the number of unicorn

startups it can generate. Europe has already surpassed China and is only lagging behind the United States in creating startups valued at more than USD 1 billion.

In 2021 alone, there were 98 new unicorn startups in Europe, while the US added 384, according to Atomico data. China, meanwhile, recorded only 26 entrepreneurial

companies with valuations above USD 1 billion due to a wider legal crackdown on tech giants.

“Europe’s stability is a great foundation for building a healthy tech ecosystem, and that has become more apparent recently,” said Atomico partner Tom Wehmeier, quoted by the Wall Street Journal. On valuations, European startups are still playing catch up with US firms. Last year, the median valuation of a startup in Europe was USD 24 million, compared to the US’s 115 million, according to Atomico. Valuations have grown on both markets in recent years, but the gap has remained largely unchanged.

EUR 200 mln

estimated startup investments in Romania in 2022, according to SeedBlink’s Andrei Dudoiu

2022 tech trends: from AI and smart homes to fitness gadgets and digital seniors

Technology has become an essential part of our daily lives, especially in urban areas, where we cannot even imagine our daily activities without electricity and all the machines it powers. And the technology we’re using is constantly improving, making new things possible. Let’s take a look at this year’s top technology trends.

By Aurel Constantin

The pandemic also forced older consumers to go online as the world shut down

Smart homes, self-driving automobiles or augmented reality glasses are just a few of the things that will become more present all over the world. Meanwhile, governments will further regulate big tech companies on matters like antitrust and privacy as the industry starts building the metaverse.

According to Gartner, one major trend has to do with the development of data fabric, which provides flexible, resilient integration of data sources across platforms and business users, making data available everywhere it’s needed regardless where the data lives. Data fabric can use analytics to learn and actively recommend where data should be used and changed. This can reduce data management efforts by up to 70 percent.

Another trend is the cybersecurity mesh, a flexible, composable architecture that integrates widely distributed and disparate security services. Cybersecurity mesh enables best-of-breed, standalone security solutions to work together to improve overall security while moving control points closer to the assets they’re designed to protect. It can quickly and reliably verify identity, context, and policy adherence across cloud and non-cloud environments. Furthermore, privacy-enhancing computation secures the processing of personal data in untrusted environments—which is increasingly critical due to evolving privacy and data protection laws as well as growing consumer concerns. Privacy-enhancing computation utilises a variety of privacy protection techniques to allow value to be extracted from data while still meeting compliance requirements.

Another big trend surrounds cloud-native platforms, technologies that allow users to build new application architectures that are resilient, elastic, and agile, enabling them to respond to rapid digital change. Cloud-native platforms improve on the traditional lift-andshift approach to cloud, which fails to take advantage of the benefits of cloud and adds complexity to maintenance.

Artificial intelligence will find new sectors to develop as well. AI engineering automates updates to data, models, and applications to streamline AI delivery. Combined with strong AI governance, AI engineering will operationalise the delivery of AI to ensure its ongoing business value. Generative AI learns about artifacts from data and generates innovative new creations that are similar to the original but don’t repeat it. Generative AI has the potential to create new forms of creative content, such as video, and accelerate R&D cycles in fields ranging from medicine to product creation.

AI is linked to autonomic systems, which are self-managed physical or software systems that learn from their environments and dynamically modify their own algorithms in real time to optimise their behaviour in complex ecosystems. Autonomic systems create an agile set of technology capabilities that are able to support new requirements and situations, optimise performance, and defend against attacks without human intervention.

SMART HOMES

People’s relationship with their homes has been changed by the pandemic. Since the home has become a workspace, people have been trying to transform their living spaces in order to accommodate the new function. The smart home concept will become very popular in the near future, and we should see a boom of smart products as a result. Tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung are working on developing a standard connectivity technology—called Matter—that will allow all smart home devices to connect to each other, regardless of brand, and ensure that new smart products will be compatible with the ones people already have in their homes.

Regarding work-from-home practices, a Lenovo study finds that 83 percent of IT leaders expect at least half of work to happen outside a traditional office in the future. That means that we will see more products, solutions, and services designed to improve the employee experience, with the office being seen as a destination for collaboration while protecting the sense of personal space people have experienced by working from home. New office designs and audio/video technology will pave the way for flexible meeting setups and create new ways to build social connections.

More companies will shift spending to improve their IT infrastructure. They will lean on outsourced and managed services, increasingly secured through Device-asa-Service (DaaS) IT acquisition models to support their teams as they try to keep up with digital transformation and increased demand. This will give rise to consumptiondriven pay-as-you-go options for solutions that allow customers to focus on business outcomes while shifting system-level support to a vendor or cloud service provider.

ELECTRIC CARS

Electric vehicles are also moving into the mainstream. The transition from cuttingedge to standard technology can only be delayed by the charging infrastructure, which might not develop at the same pace—but full-electric vehicles will certainly get better this year. Leading e-vehicle company Tesla shipped over one million cars across the globe in 2021. But we are also seeing electric models from major brands including Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen, which will make EVs accessible to more people at lower prices. Market leader Tesla will continue expanding, while startups like Lucid and Rivian will elbow their way into the fray. At the same time, R&D departments should deliver better batteries and charging options.

FITNESS GADGETS

As the pandemic has made us more careful about our health, technology came to offer gadgets meant to gather individual biometric data. Today, many clinics are already using this type of data to prevent, diagnose, and treat health problems. Tech companies like Fitbit and Oura are working on developing new wearable gadgets that will provide accurate data about users’ health.

Health-tech company Oura has developed a ring that features embedded sensors to track body temperature and other important data. The ring can also predict menstruation cycles. At the most recent CES tech trade show, a startup called Movano showcased a similar device, which compiles data about heart rate, temperature, and other vital stats that will inform the user about their potential risk of chronic diseases.

DIGITAL SENIORS

The pandemic also forced older consumers to go online as the world shut down. Now familiar and comfortable with technology, digital seniors are empowered to make purchases and use services through this channel. Businesses have an opportunity to tailor their digital experiences to target and meet the needs of this expanded online audience. According to Euromonitor International, global population aged 60+ will grow by 65 percent from 2021 to 2040, reaching over two billion people. This relatively wealthy cohort is gaining more experience and confidence using online services and choosing to adopt more tech solutions that provide assistance in their daily lives. Alongside browsing and shopping online, digital seniors embrace virtual solutions for socialising, health screenings, financial management, and learning. TikTok is one of the platforms these consumers are using, as a result of their digitally native grandchildren influencing and empowering them to be on social media. In fact, over 60 percent of consumers aged 60+ visited a social networking website at least once a week, whilst 21 percent took part in video gaming weekly. As older consumers embrace technology, human interactions will remain a prevalent component of how they engage with brands. Easy-to-use technology and seamless solutions combined with face-to-face communication define the future of digital inclusion for seniors. Building an agile plan directed at both digital seniors and elderly novices will enhance return on investment.

MOBILE ECOSYSTEM

In 2021, publishers released 2 million new apps & games, bringing the total of app and games ever released on iOS and Google Play to over 21 million. Google Play accounted for 77 percent of all apps and games released in 2021. Across both iOS and Google Play, games represented 15 percent of all new releases last year. The remaining 85 percent of new apps span across all categories on the app stores, from mobile-first movers like social to mobile-forced industries like insurance and healthcare.

Apps are also being removed and phased out over time, leaving 5.4 million available apps and games (1.8 million on iOS and 3.6 million on Google Play). With smartphones providing unparalleled reach and access to billions of consumers worldwide, every industry will be mobile-focused moving forward.

Metaspaces taking over the events industry

The metaverse provides us with a chance to create a world that is inclusive, ethical, and accessible. The evolution of technology points to a positive future: 88 percent of global consumers believe that tech can make the world a better place, and 78 percent agree it can help create a more equitable society, according to a July 2021 survey by Wunderman Thompson Data.

By Romanita Oprea

Virtual experiences and physical spaces or the reverse version - a combination that will change events even more

Habits and beliefs from our physical lives are not only extending into the digital realm, but are becoming more significant, as users explore the potential to do better in the metaverse.

Tech companies are innovating by creating digital worlds that foster meaningful connections, collaboration, and discovery.

“Think about creating a new online society, but doing it right from day one,” said Daren Tsui, the CEO of Together Labs, for Wunderman Thompson Intelligence. Tsui is describing IMVU, the company’s 3D avatarbased friendship discovery social network. The platform is designed to reflect academic research suggesting that interacting with others in 3D environments that feel realistic helps develop social presence—the feeling of being in the same place as someone else— thereby fostering a more authentic connection. Nowhere is a new social networking platform that places people in 3D environments ranging from forests to islands in the sky. CEO Jon Morris describes the platform as “the first online event space where you can truly be present, whether feeling the raw energy of a virtual performance or serendipitously vibing with a stranger you just met.”

Big tech players are also harnessing technology to enhance social experiences. Facebook’s Horizon, currently in beta mode, aims to be a “VR social experience” where explorers play, build, and create together. Microsoft’s Mesh uses mixed reality to create interconnected worlds allowing people in different physical locations to be together in real-time via holographic experiences.

“While event producers are still recovering from the whirlwind of pivoting to virtual, new technologies like NFTs, holograms, cryptocurrencies, and the metaverse are uprooting the industry once again. It’s understandable if your head is spinning a bit. The metaverse is a collection of virtual, 3D worlds, where people create their own personal avatars to explore across different platforms. The term was initially coined by author Neal Stephenson in the 1992 novel Snow Crash, but its newfound popularity came after Facebook announced that it would rebrand as Meta. To Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and other metaverse proponents, the ultimate idea is a sort of second digital life for everyone to live online,” said Claire Hoffman for BizBash.

NEW PLATFORMS TAPPING INTO THE TREND

Surreal, a platform for hybrid events that combine virtual experiences and physical spaces, launched in March 2021. To make its experiences feel even more lifelike, the brand partnered up with DNABlock to create bespoke, hyperrealistic 3D avatars and give up to 50,000 participants a personalised social and interactive experience. Built with Unreal Engine, Surreal “enables realistic, real time 3D rendering” for events that can be “configured into any environment—real or imagined.”

Looking for guidance, crypto investors are turning to emerging virtual real estate brokers and specialists. Also in March 2021, the Metaverse Group announced plans to launch Metaverse REIT, a first-of-its-kind real estate investment trust for virtual assets. Jason Cassidy, cofounder of Metaverse Group, spoke of the firm’s desire to lower the barrier of entry for larger developers who want exposure to the metaverse but “don’t know where to start.”

MetaSpace Real Estate Investment Trust (MREIT) began trading on PancakeSwap, a decentralised exchange with over USD 2 billion of daily trading volume, on December 17. MREIT founder Eric Klein said that the company would focus on buying, leasing, and minting high–traffic virtual real estate in the metaverse with profits flowing back to token holders via smart contracts, much like

a traditional real estate investment trust. The company will be fully audited with KYC and will set the standard for traditional real estate investors looking to diversify in the virtual real estate world.

“Collect up premium metaverse real estate, build high-value virtual structures, and rent them out for profit. Just like a physical real estate trust, MetaSpace, the first virtual real estate trust, aims to create a way for a group of people to hold shares in profitable real estate projects, but in the metaverse,” also explained Kristi Waterworth on Motley Fool.

Quoted by The Real Deal, Klein commented that this was the biggest opportunity of his generation. “Especially for those of us who work in real estate and have seen the industry shift in unprecedented ways. It’s web 1.0 and 2.0 combined. Social media, work, hobbies, sports, and leisure, via NFTs, everything will live in one ecosystem. If you’re not on board, you’re going to be left behind. That’s just a fact.”

MEMORABILITY. CREATIVITY. ENGAGEMENT

“The impact of the metaverse on events and meetings will be similar to the impact email had on snail mail. There will no longer be a clear divide between those who attend an event in person and those who are there virtually. When we host a hybrid event on Orbits, the MC speaks to the live audience and the virtual audience as if it were one big auditorium, and no matter where you are on the planet, you're able to interact with speakers, attend Q&As and workshops, participate in specialised experiences or simply bump shoulders with people at the bar,” said Lachlan Phillips, the CEO of Orbits, for BizBash.

The metaverse allows organisers to be creative in their approach to event planning to build truly customer-centric, memorable virtual experiences. At the same time, it has the ability to drive diversity and inclusion in events, a point that cannot be overlooked either. An attendee’s ability to create their own avatar means they can be whoever they want to be, which can result in a more inclusive audience and ultimately a more diverse selection of experiences and opinions. Avatars can walk, talk, dance, shake hands, share, like, comment, and engage throughout a virtual event, which means engagement levels can be captured in detail. The metrics and analytics available following an event can be hugely beneficial for organisers and their sponsors.

Also jumping on the trend, MetaDesign. com offers virtual brand spaces for a material world. According to the platform, people can now interact with brands in a deep, immersive, experiential way. That all applies to fields such as retail, exhibition, institutional events, etc. It’s designed to grow and adapt with the business in a constantly changing, dynamic business environment, by transcending the material world’s physical limita-

tions and restrictions. Moreover, brands can transform their physical exhibition booths into scalable, digital spaces. They can create a dynamic, experiential platform where the company’s sales force and customers can interact and where people can discover the full depth and breadth of the brand and its products. Similarly, metaspace.fi is a platform where one can own, manage, and explore different virtual spaces. These spaces can be used to store and showcase art, collectibles, and other virtual assets. At the same time, it’s a place to explore, allowing you to play around in your own spaces and see what others have made, as well as find and enjoy new kinds of interactive 3D-experiments.

Made for social communication and interactive experiences to create an alternative space for brand events and gatherings, Decol TV’s Metaspace is a playground for company representatives to design experiences without physical world limitations, expand people’s minds with the instruments of the digital world, and unite the word inside a new parallel universe. In order words, they are creating a new world of experiences, where only creativity sets the limits. No wonder specialists believe that metaspaces could take over in the very near future.

In a world where the pandemic presses on and wars seem to be knocking at our doors, the possibility of using the virtual space at its fullest represents a great alternative to reallife experiences and interactions with brands, in a safe and creative place. According to Forbes, before the pandemic, only 45 percent of people had attended a virtual event; today, that number reaches 87 percent. This trend has inspired over 90 percent of event organisers to plan for even more virtual events in 2022, according to a fall 2021 survey by

Kaltura. “Meet, host, chat, conference, sell, stream, play, dance, launch, perform, teach, present in almost real-life experience. Metaspace is the ultimate platform to host, create or attend any kind of event if you have specific invitees or friendly meetups around the world,” the website reads. As more of our lives are being spent online, it’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish “real” life from a life lived digitally. “The smartphone is no longer just a device that we use,” says Daniel Miller, professor of anthropology at University College London. “It’s become the place where we live.” Moreover, in New York City, AR art is breaking through screens. High Line Art and cultural institution The Shed collaborated to create The Looking Glass, an AR exhibition of virtual sculptures located along the High Line. In July and August 2021, onlookers were able to use the Acute Art app to view artworks projected onto the world around them, ranging from static, traditional sculptures to pieces that incorporated sound and movement. Artist Olafur Eliasson, whose work was included in the installation, told the New York Times that he viewed the pieces as an “extension of reality.”

Liminal spaces—blended virtual and physical experiences—are already successfully revolutionising culture and art scenes. Experts say that in the future, we should expect to see similar blurred reality activations in retail spaces, brand hubs, and business centres.

Tech giants add wellness music to their repertoires

As more and more people are starting to utilize music as intentional medicine (to de-stress, sleep, focus or work out), the music industry is getting better at responding to their demands. The major music streaming providers (Spotify, Amazon, Apple, etc.) are really ramping up their music-for-wellbeing content, essentially creating a new “wellness” listening channel.

By Romanita Oprea

Alecsandra Ionita, Wellbeing.ro

Big artists are experimenting with creating music that heals; meditation apps are becoming full-blown record labels; and radical new technologies, including “generative” music platforms that create an always-unfolding healing soundscape that’s based on your biometrics, are poised to emerge out of the startup lab and onto Big Media platforms. According to the Global Wellness Summit, new music-for-wellbeing concepts and platforms are transforming the USD 50 billion global music industry. Experiments across the entertainment industry—to deliver more wellness programming in more creative and meaningful ways—will heat up.

The pandemic has accelerated music consumption, with people often turning to music specifically for mental health relief. A Samsung UK study found that compared to 2019, roughly a quarter of millennials are now listening to over five hours of music a day— and over half of them rated music as their number one “feel-good” source in 2020. A global study from NYU, McGill University, and the University of Barcelona found that music was the number one way people were tackling anxiety during covid-19 (more than sex, alcohol, working out, etc.), and that music was the only thing that actually lowered their depression levels. Spotify reported that global listening time for their mental health playlists doubled in 2020.

“We all know that music influences our mood and can boost our memory. If we want to keep our brain engaged through the aging process, listening to music represents a total brain workout. Worldwide studies show the numerous benefits of music on people’s health, all based on MRI results. They show that music stimulates important parts of the brain, especially the limbic system—known as the emotional centre of the brain. This area also controls blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate. So based on these conclusions, we can say that slow paced music tells our body to calm down and relax,” said Alecsandra Ionita, wellbeing specialist at Wellbeing.ro.

Our wellness is defined by the number of moments we spend relaxing, whether through a spa visit, a morning run in the park or having music playing in the background while we work or study. So, the more we listen to a certain type of music, which the music industry has classified as wellness music, the more we benefit from all the positive things it brings to our lives. “Before covid, we used to bring relaxation music to all our workshops. At first, we found it hard to change the mood of all participants in a corporate environment: many were loaded with worries, deadlines, pending projects, and calls. After a few weeks however, we saw a significant increase in people’s positive mood. Playing relaxing music while they were painting or working on DIY projects together with our trainers was the best choice we made. And there was a lot of positive feedback,” Ionita

added. Music in wellness is as important as breathing in and out, says Teodora Buzoianu, TRE® Provider & Trainee Trainer for TRE® Romania. “As important as the seasons are to the rhythm of life. Music is rhythm. Our nervous systems are rhythm-making-and-sustaining dynamic processes. Every process in our bodies that sustains life revolves around rhythm: heart beats, breath flows, sleeping and waking cycles—everything is rhythm. And how we feel about ourselves and perceive the world is profoundly influenced and regulated by these very rhythmic processes. That’s also why some songs move us so deeply: their ‘beat’ speaks to a certain rhythm inside us. We listen to sad songs when we are sad and to happy songs when we are happy or when we want to change our mood,” Buzoianu explained.

Moreover, according to Teodora, we should consider the following questions: what is wellness to us? How do we define it or think about it? Most would say it is a sense of flow, ease or wellbeing inside oneself and one’s life or a lack of discomfort or disease. Whichever way we define it, we can’t help noticing that some of the words we use to describe both wellness and music are in the same family, which revolves around rhythm, vibration, patterns, tempo, flow, frequency.

“As humans, we are wired for connection, and one way we go about connecting is through the rhythmicity of another human’s voice, tone, tempo, prosody – this is how our nervous systems very quickly determine if we are in the presence of a friendly or threatening other. There is a certain range of sounds and frequencies that our ears are attuned to recognising as soothing and safe (think about a mom lullabying her baby to sleep), while others that fall out of that harmonic range make us pay attention to a possible threat in our environment (think of the dissonant sounds used to manufacture the honks of our cars or alarms on ambulances, police, and firefighter vehicles,),” Buzoianu noted.

Even more so in our modern world, music is a go-to when we need to find rhythm again—something that was once achieved by living closer to nature, hearing the chirping of birds, sensing the changing wind patterns, following the signs we once were able to read and listen for in order to find our next meal, etc. Although we are now mostly separated from these natural flows of nature and life and have replaced them with the fast (and dissonant) rhythms of the city, we cannot be completely cut off from these life-sustaining rhythms, and one way to recreate that experience is through music.

THE SOUND OF WELLNESS

What about the types of music we use? Alecsandra Ionita argued that we mainly listen to music to boost our mood. When we travel, we choose a certain genre; when we work remotely, we tend to lower the volume in order to stay focused on our daily to-do list. “I think that the type of music we listen to depends a lot on our mood, personality, and especially on what we want to achieve by listening to a certain type of music. If it fulfils its role at the end of the day, then we can call it wellness music, because it automatically makes us feel better. Science has proven that music releases mood-enhancing chemicals into our body, which therapists may use as an alternative way of treating patients. In my line of work, I’ve met therapists who specialised in music therapy, who would focus their practice not only on music but also on combining mental health tools with ambient music as a way of treating different addictions or fears,” said Ionita.

At the same time, it is interesting to observe that only two main types of music seem to be playing in the public spaces of our modern lives. “There is the boom-boom of the shopping malls, restaurants, and some radios, and there is the spa-like-music of hotels, wellness centres, and cafés. Thinking about the profound impact music has on our inner rhythms, it is perhaps not surprising that over the last few decades we’ve preferred music with a higher BPM (beatsper-minute) rate, containing more digitally-generated sounds. We live in an increasingly fast-paced and technological world, which conditions us to value ‘fast’ and ‘more’ and ‘better’ and ‘latest/newest’ as indicators of efficiency and success. The BPM of the music we listen to is a reflection of that—which in turn speaks to the high-charged and over-excited state of our nervous systems,” Buzoianu noted. Is it any wonder, then, that when we do go out in nature during weekends or holidays, we feel at least a little bit out of sorts and out of place? It’s as if the quiet atmosphere is almost too hard to bear… at least for the first few hours or days.

“It is not an accident that there are certain types of sounds that are associated with the wellness business, and they are quite easy to recognise. They usually involve soothing waterfalls or ocean waves, crickets or birds, wind blowing through leaves, chimes, Tibetan singing bowls, guitars or generally real, analogue instruments with real people playing them, as well as a specific vocal tone & tempo. All of these sounds, vibrations, and rhythms can have a direct influence of the state of our nervous systems, impacting the way our bodies regulate their processes and promoting the functioning of our rest-digest-repair mode of the nervous system—which cannot be activated when we are stuck in that high-charged and over-excited state,” Buzoianu added.