Sadly, we don’t tend to get bedtime stories read to us as adults. Sleeping with podcasts is the next best thing, and here are the top shows to listen to as you doze off!

Breathing exercises, relaxing your muscles, counting sheep. These are all techniques we use to send ourselves off to the land of nod. Particularly since becoming so attached to screens and relentless information, a lot of us struggle to sleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow. Just because technology might be keeping us awake, doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t help soothe us.

The idea of sleeping with podcasts is nothing new. It’s very common to drift off whilst catching up on your favourite audio show. It might not actually be a podcast aimed at aiding sleep, you could be falling asleep to a podcast about film.

Some people just enjoy the comfort and familiarity that comes with listening to something in bed. If this isn’t something you’ve been totally convinced by, it might be a good idea to jump in with a podcast designed for better sleep.

Bed-based retailer Sleepseeker released a study recently which revealed the best podcasts to sleep to. Taking into account rank and podcast score, the list consists of 35 podcasts. To really solidify each podcast’s popularity, the list looked at how many subscribers each show had.

Image Credit: Sleepseeker

Top Podcasts for Better Sleep

If you’re interested in sleeping with podcasts, choose from the 10 best sleep podcasts! The list is as follows:

  1. Sleep With Me
  2. Nothing Much Happens
  3. Get Sleepy
  4. Sleepy
  5. Snoozecast
  6. Sleep Cove
  7. Deep Energy
  8. Tracks to Relax
  9. The Sleepy Bookshelf
  10. Sleep Tight Stories

Sleep With Me gained a winning score of 8.77, and has over 4.4 million listens. As the most popular sleep-related podcast in the world, it’s unsurprising to see it take the top spot.

What Make a Good Sleep Podcast?

Sleep With Me is a podcast centred around storytelling. The show’s host, Drew Ackerman, employs a gentle tone and slower pace for speaking. This all helps to calm and relax the listener, promoting a steady slide into sleep.

The subject matter is such that it won’t overstimulate your brain or get you thinking too hard. This tends to be something that lots of the other shows on the list have in common.

People might need a sleep podcast if they suffer from insomnia, meaning they seriously struggle to sleep at night. Experiencing insomnia can often leave you feeling frustrated, isolated, and even desperate at times. That’s why many find comfort in a soothing voice during hours that can easily feel lonely.

Other reasons for wanting to sleep with podcasts could be nightmares or night terrors. If you have a particularly nasty dream, it can be difficult to calm your mind back down to a place where sleep can occur. It’s also common to feel nervous about going back to sleep in case another nightmare creeps in.

The key is to calm and relax, so successful sleep podcasts usually need:

  • A softly spoken narrator
  • Storytelling aspects
  • Non-challenging topics
  • Relaxing music
  • Soothing ambience or white noise

Finding Sleepy Music for Podcasts

Thinking about creating your very own sleep podcast? You’ll need to find some suitable podcast intro music, and even music to feature within the episodes.

If you’re not sure about the sort of music you should add to your podcast, here are some suggestions!

  • Meditation music
  • Instrumental only tracks
  • Slow tempo
  • Acoustic instruments

Whilst you don’t need to stick to this list religiously, it will help to steer you in the right direction. There’s nothing worse than listening to a podcast as you doze off, only to be shocked away by loudly distorted electric guitars chugging out power chords.

Any music you do use in your podcast project will need to be royalty free, and have the sync license covered. To make sure you can spend all your energy creating the perfect podcast, Synchedin has taken care of all the licensing and copyright stuff.

Sign up to Synchedin now and start exploring the huge library of royalty free music, all from fantastic independent artists. Curated collections will help inspire you and choose the best tracks for your project.

You can narrow down your search by filtering the genre, mood, instruments, vocals, and sub-genre. So, no wasted time trawling through the wrong playlists or suggestions – just sign in and find exactly what you’re searching for!

Subscribe to Synchedin from just $4.99 per month, and add unlimited tracks to your podcasts, videos, livestreams and more!