The honest answer is "it depends" — but we can be very specific about what it depends on.
Silence has a strong empirical foundation for certain tasks. The irrelevant sound effect, replicated in dozens of studies, shows that any changing auditory stimulus impairs serial recall — the exact cognitive process used in memorization. Baddeley's model of working memory explains why: the phonological loop, responsible for holding verbal information temporarily, gets disrupted by external sound. A 2017 study at the University of Gävle found that students scored 5-10% higher on reading comprehension tests in silent conditions versus music conditions, with the gap widening for more complex passages. Silence also eliminates any attentional cost of monitoring or adjusting your music, freeing that cognitive bandwidth for the material.
Music's advantages are less about direct cognitive enhancement and more about enabling longer, more consistent study sessions. Cassidy and MacDonald (2007) found that students in music conditions reported significantly lower anxiety and higher task engagement than those in silence. For students studying in noisy environments — dormitories, cafes, shared apartments — music provides a controlled, predictable sound layer that is far less disruptive than unpredictable environmental noise. Music also creates temporal structure: a playlist can function as a Pomodoro-like timer, providing natural break points and a sense of progress through a study session.
The most reliable predictor is the nature of the study task. Verbal tasks (reading, essay writing, vocabulary acquisition, foreign language study) consistently favor silence in controlled experiments. Spatial and mathematical tasks (geometry, physics problems, data analysis) show either no difference or a slight advantage for music. Creative tasks (brainstorming essay topics, designing study plans, making concept maps) tend to benefit from moderate background music. If your study session includes multiple task types, the optimal strategy is to switch your audio environment as you switch tasks — silence for reading the textbook, music for working through practice problems.
Furnham and Bradley (1997) demonstrated that extraverts' performance on complex cognitive tasks was unaffected by background music, while introverts showed significant impairment. This aligns with arousal theory: introverts already operate at higher baseline arousal, so additional stimulation pushes them past the optimal zone. People who score high on the "openness to experience" personality dimension also tend to benefit more from music, possibly because they process it less intrusively. Additionally, if you have always studied with music, state-dependent learning effects mean you may genuinely retrieve information better with music playing — your memory is partially encoded with that context.
Rather than choosing one or the other permanently, the evidence supports a deliberate hybrid strategy. Begin each study session with music during the first 10-15 minutes to establish mood and arousal — this is when music's motivational benefits are strongest. Transition to silence for the core deep-learning phase, particularly if you are reading or memorizing. Return to music if you notice your attention flagging or your motivation dropping. Track your own performance across sessions and adjust accordingly. The students who perform best are not the ones who found the "right" answer to this question, but the ones who learned to read their own cognitive state and respond appropriately.
You may benefit from steady-state sound like pink noise or a fan rather than music. If silence feels uncomfortable, it is likely the absence of masking noise that bothers you — not a need for music specifically.
There is evidence for state-dependent learning — you recall information better in conditions similar to encoding. If your exam is in a silent room, incorporate silent study sessions. But you do not need to study exclusively in silence.