The Study of Popular Music on the Academic Performance of Students within Agogo Asante Akyem -North District: Any Association for Academic Discourse?

There remains an age -long perception that listening to music whilst undertaking an academic examination/exercise enabled students to subdue stress and augment their concentration leading to higher scores. Nonetheless, there are varied perceptions as regards the subject matter as others posit that music at the background of an examination hall or class only leads to divided attention of examinees, wasting their precious time and that performance of students ebbs more on talent or motivation other than mere playing of music at the background. These uncertainties and ambiguities informed the basis of this quantitative study using primary data in the form of questionnaires administered to 130 respondents from a population of 350. The researchers hypothesized: students studying music performed better than their counterparts without music orientation and the results confirmed the hypothesis especially for quantitative courses, leading to a recommendation that the study of music should be taken seriously by educational stakeholders due to its industrial and academic opportunities in sub -Saharan Africa, especially Ghana. The researchers further recommended that a general stance should not be taken against students listening to music during studies but should be treated on individual course merit since most students indicated in this research that they can comfortably listen to music and concurrently study when it comes to quantitative or numerical courses such as Mathematics etc.