It's easier than ever, now, to get distracted and screen-centric to the detriment of your actual mood and mental health. Too many of us look at our phones in the dead of night, in the dark, as the final act of our day, or struggle to put them down if we want to meditate or relax.

That's where Tidal is stepping in. It's bringing an amazing new service to its streaming users, called Brain.fm. It could help people to better engage in activities they care about, whether that's helping them to sleep, to concentrate, or to relax.

Plus, right now you can try Tidal for a whole quarter of a year by getting a massive 90% off a four-month Tidal membership plan, letting you get four months of access to music, videos, podcasts, playlists and more for just $4.

Returning to Brain.fm, though, the service has one of those core concepts that you feel annoyed you didn't think of it first. It has created a range of what it calls "functional music", which are tracks that have been designed and created specifically to help people to lose their distractions while they listen, helping to steer them toward the mental state they're aiming for. 

That could be drowsiness in the evening, or wakeful concentration in the middle of a sunny Friday afternoon. What backs up Brain.fm's tracks is hard science, finessed through experimentation and rigorous methodology. It has tested its tracks while large numbers of subjects complete simple games to ascertain how they affect people's performance. Measuring these against a placebo control track demonstrates the effect that Brain.fm can have on people. 

Part of how this music works so cleverly is that it isn't designed to hold your attention. Many of us struggle to use music as a productivity tool partly because music so often grabs your mind, whether through lyrics or strong melodies. That's part of why people so often use film scores to work with, since that's a rare slice of music that might be designed for background listening during a scene. 

Just one reason behind why Tidal has brought Brain.fm into its fold is that its tracks are composed from the ground up to be in the background of your mind, helping you to concentrate on your activity, not on distracting sounds. Of course, it helps that they're not auto-generated, too - real humans compose the music used, and their talent shines through when you do listen carefully. That fits perfectly with Tidal's ethos, making them a great fit to expand Tidal's library of more than 60 million songs.

In terms of how this works on Tidal, the tracks are effectively simplified into playlists, for now. For example, there's Deep Work, to help you maintain productivity, and Deep Sleep to help you drift off. That latter set of tracks is noteworthy for the way it uses 3D sound to create an extremely gentle "rocking" sensation to lull you into slumber, a lovely touch.

Since Tidal has long been the home of high-definition music streaming, that sort of quality audio is a natural next step. And, again, there's never been a better time to try out the entire Tidal package - it's not often that you get access to this much stunning content for just a dollar per month.

That four months for four bucks deal lasts until April 5th, so be sure to jump on it, especially if you're new to working from home and could use some help in keeping the efficiency levels high even without an office environment to spur you onward.