Electric Castle launches “In A World That Won’t Stop Singing”, an emotional documentary about two young people living with musical anhedonia, a rare neurological condition that prevents them from feeling pleasure when listening to music. Available exclusively on VOYO, the film is a plea for embracing diversity and for recognising the many forms of joy that a music festival can bring, even when emotions don’t come from sound.

The documentary follows two attendees experiencing the five days of Electric Castle 2025, surrounded by people who enjoy music at full intensity. Their story, however, is completely different: rhythms, artists and dancing trigger very few sensations. Instead, they discover another side of the festival. In the end, both receive confirmation of their condition but also of the fact that it is not a limitation in connecting with the wide spectrum of positive emotions that Electric Castle creates.

The project was developed together with the University of Barcelona, which has a dedicated research team studying musical anhedonia. The team also created the BMRQ, the global instrument used to test this condition, which both documentary protagonists completed.

“We’ve been testing musical anhedonia for many years in controlled laboratory environments, but Electric Castle offered us the first opportunity to move our assessment into a dynamic, noisy and emotional context like a festival. The festival gave us conditions we cannot reproduce in the lab. For us, as researchers, this provides a new angle of understanding the condition: how it manifests in everyday life, not only in experimental tasks,” says Prof. Josep Marco-Pallarés.

For Electric Castle, the experiment confirmed that the festival’s continuous efforts to create diverse ways for people to feel part of the event build invisible bridges between mind and emotion.

“We are different individuals and yet, for 13 years, we have been a community. The fact that, through all the experiences brought together under the Electric Castle umbrella, we manage to open sensory pathways for every participant is wonderful but also a long-term challenge. We know we must keep the festival open to everyone who wants to feel the joy of being together, whether they come for the music, the fun, or the spectacular sunsets at the castle,” says Tudor Costinaș, Head of Communications at Electric Castle.

At the edition taking place between July 16 and 19, 2026, Electric Castle and the University of Barcelona will set up a dedicated area for anyone wishing to get tested and learn more about this neurological condition.

The documentary “In A World That Won’t Stop Singing / Într-o lume care cântă fără oprire” can be watched exclusively on the VOYO platform.