*4.3. Limitations*

The current study used a convenience sample typical for online surveys with welleducated participants and almost half being students. Only about 13% of the participants had to take care of children (note that in the representative sample of Fink et al. (2021) [31], about 31% lived with child(ren) and 11% had to do homeschooling), and most participants did not report having to face existential changes, which might partly explain why the worries were somewhat low in the current study. Nonetheless, changes in daily life were reported, which shows that the lockdown affected the people in the current study, presenting an important target to be investigated.

In general, using questionnaires to ask about music use and the time spent on music listening may lead to inaccurate responses, which is a limitation that has already been discussed in other COVID-19 and music-related studies (see, [12,34]), particularly when assessing musical behavior retrospectively as in the current study. Even though care was taken that the three questionnaires were assessed first on the retrospective view and then on the current view (and not the same one twice in a row), the responses might have been similar just because the participants remembered what they answered the first time. Still, it also means that participants had to become aware of their changes in behavior and directly compare them with before. Being aware of the strengths and limitations of this investigation, we have taken a unique approach to compare the behavior before and during the lockdown, which makes a valuable addition to other current investigations on this research topic.

The questionnaires on worries, everyday behavior, and perceived changes in musiclistening behavior in the current study could not be validated beforehand due to the shortness of time (which is a typical problem in COVID-19 related studies, as discussed in Bäuerle et al. (2020) [4]). Care was taken that the items chosen covered daily topics present in the media and statistical reports of official channels in April 2020. Seeing strong overlap with other current approaches to music and COVID-19 [31–33] assured us that the selection was adequate.

#### **5. Conclusions**

Research has provided ample evidence on how various levels of music affect people's everyday lives, but studies about musical engagement in exceptional and troubling times are rare. The study of the COVID-19 pandemic has given us a sad but unique opportunity to start filling in this gap: With the current study, we focused on changes from before and during the lockdown in Germany and on trying to find the connection between the restrictions applied and the changes in music-listening behavior. Overall, we see a decrease in musical engagement in the current sample, reflecting changes in daily routines and a lower capacity to engage with music due to the new challenges. Adjustments of music listening to the lockdown situation include music being used more to kill time and overcome loneliness and less for motor synchronization and enhanced well-being, reflecting a change in musical functions toward coping with loneliness and fewer possibilities to actively engage with music together with other people. In the same vein, many people report missing live music, particularly those worrying about further restrictions, showing the valuable effect of in-person engagement with music.

Finally, the results of the present study can give insights into how people use music during other exceptional circumstances such as death, illness, unemployment, or separation, in which people have to deal with similar worries and changes in daily life.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10 .3390/ijerph181910463/s1, Supporting Information, Data, Questionnaire.

**Author Contributions:** N.A.R. and J.M. designed the research, N.A.R. collected the data, J.M. and N.A.R. analyzed the data, N.A.R. and J.M. wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** All experimental procedures were approved by the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society, and were undertaken with written informed consent of each participant.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data are included as Supplementary Materials.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank Katja Rudolph for help with recruiting participants.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
