Musicians are four times more likely to go deaf

From Ludvig van Beethoven to the Who's Pete Townshend, some of the most celebrated musicians and songwriters in the world have suffered with problems related to their ears and deafness - with Townshend blaming his own badly damaged hearing on loud music played through headphones in the studio, rather than from the who's explosive live shows. Now new research says that professional musicians are four times more likely to suffer from deafness caused by loud noise than the general population. Coldplay's Chris Martin and Will.i.am both suffer from tinnitus - with the latter saying he doesnt know what silence sounds like and the former putting down his own suffering to listening to the loud music he listened to as a teenager - and the authors of the new study from the Universities of Bremen, Oldenberg and the Leibniz Institute say that damage can come fro, both a single very loud noise as well as continuous exposure to sound, and that their findings make a strong case for protecting musicians hearing and that previous theories that exposure to music can actually improve hearing ability and sensitivity - are not correct and the damage from loud music outweighs any benefits.