What's playing in your headphones while you code?

Comments

[Ryan Norton]

A mix of ambient, electronic and jazz. Disparition, explosions in the sky, Adam Young, Miles Davis and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

[Jacob Tan 🤓]

This 😄

soundcloud.com/epicmountain

[Eduardo Gómez Vásquez]

• Black Metal
• Trash Metal
• Folk Metal
• Power Metal
• Heavy Metal
• Nu Metal
• Symphonic Metal
• Death Metal

There is another kind of music?

[Ben Sinclair]

Pirate Metal?

[Vicus]

Prog Metal. Otherwise you are missing Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Leprous, Haken. And what kind of life is that?

[Eduardo Gómez Vásquez]

You're right!

[Adnan Kičin]

Mostly instrumentals because the lyrics can sometimes distract me and lead to a solo performance that no one needs or wants to hear.

Here are some of those:

• Max Richter
• Cristobal Tapia de Veer
• Ludovico Einaudi

[Luis Ventura]

Almost anything from Beatles to Taylor Swift to Daft Punk to Rachmaninoff when writing boilerplate code or simple stuff, but I need total silence when writing complex algorithms or debugging, so I always carry a couple of rubber ear plugs from hardware stores.

[Jessica Lam]

open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...

And
open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...

[Paul Frame]

The Dark Knight’s soundtrack

[Ben Halpern]

Oh that sounds great

[Fanny]

open.spotify.com/user/anotherfanny...

[Aarøπ Dayalaπ]

My current head space
open.spotify.com/user/darthgoon/pl...

[Chris Pahla]

Jay Z 4:44

[Madzz Srestha]

Right now Lost on You by LP. What I listen to varies with my mood and what I am working on.

[Billy]

musicforprogramming.net/

[Yerkon]

thanks

[Phil Thomas]

Thanks! I'm going to give this a listen this morning.

[James Hood]

+1

[Mike 🤘]

Usually heavy and high-energy. Usually metal. I put together some of my favorites albums and removed anything that wasn't high-tempo: open.spotify.com/user/mikengarrett...

If you're looking for somethign new, here's the best metal releases from 2016: open.spotify.com/user/mikengarrett...

[Ghost]

Oh yes, metal, dubstep or anything high energy. An absolute must!

[Daniel Mason]

Exactly the same here. It works so well.

[TPiddy]

Agreed.... metal of all kinds, though I tend to shy away from doom/black/death...

[Brian Hanna]

Same here, preferably with harsh, mostly indecipherable vocals. Prevents me from getting distracted by the lyrics.

[Callum Messiter]

The entire soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings trilogy is great. A day of writing code can sometimes feel like a bare-footed journey from the comfort of the Shire to an ork-surrounded volcano via the lair of a giant man-eating spider, so it's really quite thematically appropriate: youtu.be/_SBQvd6vY9s

[Daniel Waller (he/him)]

Yes! Bit too dark sometimes but works great anytime after lunch

[Carlton Hanna]

I usually forget to put headphones on. Once I start coding time flies and I forget about music. When I do remember, I find music without too much lyrics does the trick. Mogwai is a good band to listen to.

[Ben Halpern]

You must not work in an open office!

[Jess Lee (she/her)]

YES. Mogwai all day everyday.

[Erika Wiedemann]

I'm usually creeping my spotify discover playlist for Liquid / DnB tracks, and chill EDM. Nice, ethereal background.

[Eric Ekong]

Very similar. Chilled dubstep, a lot of instrumental hip-hop (anything by Blue Sky Black Death!) ambient tracks. I try to stay away from action movie soundtracks because the turns of pace make me anxious.

[sechaba tsotetsi]

Try Aso on soundcloud real cool

[Eric Ekong]

👌🏿

[Ben Halpern]

So you're usually looking for new tracks, or do you listen to the same ones a lot?

[Erika Wiedemann]

It's about a 50/50 split. When I really need to focus, I use songs I know I like from my saved (most of which came from discover). When I can focus a little less, I casually look for new ones.

[Gabe Dunn]

That's pretty much what I'll do.

[Jordan Roskelley]

• Fastfall Dustforce OST
• Tron/Tron Remix
• Chipzel/FantomenK/EnV (electronic, not rap)
• Dunderpatrullen/Rymdkraft/Bossfight
• Lindsey Stirling
• Moby (esp Play)
• Fatboy Slim
• The Glitch Mob
• 65daysofstatic
• Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy
• Muse
• David Guetta - Nothing But The Beat disc 2
• Ludovico Einaudi - Divenire
• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (as embarrassing as that is)
• Papa Roach/Disturbed/Evanescence ...probably more

[Phil]

Love the range there. Add the Atmospheric Black Metal playlist from Spotify and Netsky dnb stuff. Mood dependant always.

[Kinna Thompson]

Ludovico Einaudi! I love Divenire, especially when I'm frustrated by something. I haven't tried Lindsey Stirling while working, but I'll have to now!

[Ben Halpern]

I recently got into the sound track from The Social Network movie and I find it to be the perfect mix of tempo for me. I definitely recommend it. Great sound track in and of itself, but also reminiscent of a movie all about building a pretty damn popular website.

[Agustín Ventura Carrasco]

Great album, as almost any OST by Trent Reznor. I also enjoy listening to Lost Girl and Before the flood ones.

[Matt]

Likewise. Great choice for coding.

[Adam]

Such a great soundtrack, I can never skip it when it comes on!

[Marcos Felipe Pimenta Rodrigues]

brain.fm/
Seriously, within seconds into listening to the focus mode, I get thrice the concentration level. In about 30 minutes I'm almost in a trance. I recommend taking breaks from time to time, though; if I listen to it for too long I feel weird and disconnected from the reality.

[Juhi]

The Skyrim soundtrack (or any Elder Scrolls ones) as well as electronic or ambient music usually.

[pandom]

This! Spotify has a good collection.

Anything by Jeremy Soule is good.

• Blizzard game Soundtracks
• Hans Zimmer
• Aphex Twin
• 65daysofstatic
• Celldweller

[HawiCaesar]

Hans Zimmer Always!

[Diogo Correia]

According to last.fm, I mostly listen to Ambient, Electronic & Jazz. Artists like:

• Nils Frahm
• Ólafur Arnalds
• Gustavo Santaolalla
• Floating Points
• Rival Consoles
• Boards of Canada
• GoGo Peguin
• Bonobo

and many others.

I used brain.fm previously, and while it works it can get tiring after a few weeks of listening to the same drone sounds. Too me what most helps me get into flow is calm, smooth, deep background music.

[N0X]

BoC is perfect

[Logan Gray]

I mostly find any music with lyrics, etc. is sometimes too distracting.

So ambient / electronic is always nice.

Also, I've always found SomaFM Defcon music - is always good.
somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/de...

[manuel]

I like SomaFM. I made a simple page for me to listen Groove Salad :)

wildauer.io/somafm/

[Anirudh Murali]

Am I the only one listening to Interstellar OST? It's pure bliss, it takes us to whole new dimension.

[Fernando Alvarez]

Depend on the mood but here's my overall genres

• Psychedelic Rock
• New Age
• 80's, 70's, 60's and 50's in general
• Metal
• Classic Music

== Geek Stuff Incoming ==

• Movies OST
• Video games OST
• Anime OST

[Steffen Frosch]

It totally depends on the situation. When i am in a greenfield project i like to hear some electronic tunes. I like things without lyrics like Jean-Michel Jarre or Rival Consoles. Or on other occasions i really enjoy David Hicken (piano artist which if you did not know him you should definitely check it out ).

If i'll have to bugfix something in a legacy code base (it happens from time to time) i sometimes need some energetic or aggressive tunes. E.g. Carpenter Brut or The Algorithm are quite good for this kind of work. Even though sometimes i hear music with lyrics i find it most of the time distracting while coding.

[Alexander Kashev]

Zachtronics' games soundtracks, e.g. SHENZHEN I/O OST: zachtronics.bandcamp.com/album/she...

Some Ben Prunty, e.g. Cipher: benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/ciphe...

In general, preference for electronica.

[Vicente Jr Yuchitcho]

Yes! Love the Shenzhen I/O soundtrack.

[Joshua Bemenderfer]

• Ludovico Einaudi
• Mattia Cupelli
• Ramin Djawadi
• Zack Hemsey
• John Powell
• Byetheway-May
• Iván Torrent
• Tartalo Music
• Kai Engel
• Kevin MacLeod
• Harry Gregson-Williams

Yes, I like obscure instrumental artists. Any more anyone can recommend?

[Kinna Thompson]

You don't have Max Richter or Yann Tiersen on this list? I'm surprised. Also: Johann Johannsson, Nathan Barr and the Sunshine OST (John Murphy!)

[Joshua Bemenderfer]

Oh hey look, my playlists just grew by a couple hundred songs! Thanks a ton!

I actually do have some stuff from John Murphy. I just didn't stick it on the list because the number of songs was so low compared to those other ones.

[Andy Johnson]

Electronic. Dubstep, Trance, Techno, whatever. Lots of Lindsey Stirling, actually.

[A.D.]

Noise Cancelling headphones without the music (QC35, previously QC15). I've tried many things like brain.fm, focus zen, simply noise, focusmusic.fm - all of them became boring after 2-3 weeks.

I also have a 'debugging' playlist on spotify - when I need less concentration. 'Fast' music without vocals - liquid Drum 'n' Bass, Daft Punk's TRON: Legacy OST. Sometimes i switch to classical music when I'm working on something frustrating - Tchaikovsky symphony 5, Vivaldi Four Seasons, Camille Saint-Saens or Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet.

I like to thing of myself as die hard death metal fan, but I can't code with this music.

[Dulan Lawliet~]

Switch(mood){
case 1:
Atmospheric/ Epic/ Ambient Metal
break;
case 2:
Post Grunge/ Stoner Rock
break;
case 3:
Old School Rap/Hiphop/RnB/Pop/Electro
break;
case 4:
The Weekend haha
break;
default:
Shuffle all
}

[Casen]

Metal, 90's rock (nirvana, pearl jam, alice in chains, etc), tons of hip hop (E40, Too $hort, Snoop, Dre, Biggie, etc), Alt rock/Indie (Coheed and cambria, Spoon, Arcade fire, The Shins, etc), and finally sometimes I will put on various forms of electronic music, but I tend not to pay too much attention to who the artist is.

[Pavneet Singh Saund]

Working in an open office means headsets with noise cancellation is a must. I used to listen to well-known Rock / metal music. I've found more that the more variation there is, the easier it is to et distracted.

After discovering mindfulness I've started enjoying silence, and that's the music of my choice these days: silence (noise cancellation almost works for that)

I've found the TRON / Social Network soundtracks to be quite enjoyable when not doing brain-taxing work.

[Mark]

It can be anything really, mostly pop and hip hop; sometimes k-pop, or classic rock or big band. What I tend to do is play the same songs over and over and over again.

Anytime my music starts up after being stopped, I start at the beginning of one giant Spotify playlist I've been adding to over the years. I know how many times I've been interrupted by how often I've heard the first song today, or how deep into the playlist I got.

[Chris Flores]

Sharing my personally curated EDM/Electronic music playlist here (has almost 600 songs and growing. I also update it almost every day). I listen to it everyday and it works well for me!

open.spotify.com/user/complexchris...

[Anton Krylov]

I love coding in silence, and I do it whenever possible. It can bring my concentration to the levels I will never reach with music: if I listen to some new recommended music, then occasional intrusive and lyrics-rich tracks are inevitable; if I listen to something I already listened to, some tracks distract me with associated memories.
When coding in silence is not possible, I usually turn on some noise or find playlists for coding, depending on current mood.

[Jessy]

Depends on the day, but I really like those lo-fi hip hop streams on Youtube. You know, the ones with the looped old anime backgrounds? youtube.com/watch?v=h8W73zB4VMM

I also enjoy liquid dubstep/chillstep. Anything that's relatively low tempo and mostly instrumental, really.

I tried listening to the music I usually like while working (mostly rock), but felt I was concentrating on the music instead of my work.

[avallete]

... 
while(programming)
{
    music = randomPickOne([
    "keygens music compilation", 
    "Epic music", // (Hans Zimmer)
    "Game OST remix/compilation", //(mirror edge is awesome)
    "Electro house/chill"
   ]);
   playIt(music);
} 

[Guillermo Gerard]

I usually search for some keywords like dubstep, glitch, gaming, epic music (yes, you already guess it: I'm not a metal guy). I really like how the violin sounds, so right now I'm listening to Lindsey Stirling

[djkwagala]

I listen to instrumentals of christian music especially: youtube.com/watch?v=rvo4P0SfBOw&li...

Recently I'm hooked to some Nigerian gospel mix: youtube.com/watch?v=fHWCE054TEM

[(ಠ_ಠ) sCrain]

If I'm looking for variety, I'll usually listen to Programming Music Mix for Dark Minds: youtube.com/watch?v=KGH26RaM0M4

Sometimes I just want something more like close to white/grey noise, but with a dab of a beat to it so then I'll listen to this, title "CLEANSE Destructive ENERGY From Over-Thinking | Theta Binaural Beats" youtube.com/watch?v=Cpw_Wkm05j8

Both of these channels have other variations on these themes as well.

[Antonio Radovcic]

For focussed work I prefer Indie-Game-Sountracks (e.g. C418, Austin Wintory, Disasterpiece), mostly easy and silent stuff.
For easier stuff like styling, markup and handling tickets I listen to podcasts or audio-books.

[Jamie Phelps]

If I listen to anything (I work from home pretty much exclusively, so usually not) it has to be something I know so well my brain won’t be distracted. As a former music major, even classical music can distract me if it’s unfamiliar because my brain begins trying to analyze it, understand its structure, etc. So, I have some go-to albums or pieces that I can listen to while coding because I know them so well, mostly from my college years when I still had time to listen to new music. Here are a few:

• Understand This Is A Dream by The Juliana Theory
• 40 Acres by Caedmon’s Call
• Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite
• Speakeasy by Stavesacre
• Anthem by Less Than Jake
• Slowly Going The Way of the Buffalo by MxPx
• Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concerto de Aranjuez

In the absence of this, I will sometimes also put on Coffitivity as a sort of hum of noise if I’m in a noisy environment. coffitivity.com/

[Darshak Parikh]

I am a big fan of LukHash. He's a Polish artist who produces chiptune, fused with electro and dubstep. Everything from his tunes to the album and track names put your brain into coding mode.

Have a look at his site: lukhash.com

You can download his discography at jamendo.com/artist/353807/lukhash

[Mikel Farley]

Any time need to get work done, I have a couple small playlists I set on shuffle & swap every 30 - 60 minutes. A mix over lively Irish jig & some-what funky smooth (metro?) Jazz. It's a strange combo but they blend surprisingly over long periods of time on repeat.

play.google.com/music/playlist/AMa...

[Arne Mertz]

Lots of electronic stuff. EDM, trance, drum'n'bass, dubstep. But also some trip hop, soundtracks, sometimes a bit of metal, even some Americana made in Hamburg!: open.spotify.com/album/6OvZVQQZyW6...

Current favourite: open.spotify.com/track/6hYyiunELXz...

Mixed fav playlist
open.spotify.com/user/1128664007/p...

[Paulo H. R. Pinheiro]

Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Itamar Assumpção.

[Massimo Artizzu]

I've created several playlists, divided by genre, that I listen according to the mood:

• Rock (listening now - Queen, Muse, Foo Fighters, ...);
• Pop (Sting, R.E.M., Depeche Mode...);
• Dance/electronic (Daft Punk, Planet Funk, Fatboy Slim...);
• Classic (Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini...);
• Epic (Two Steps From Hell, Audiomachine, Hans Zimmer...);
• Celtic (Secret Garden, Clannad, Hevia...);
• Heavy (Nightwish, Rammstein, Within Temptation...);
• Instrumental/new age (Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Enigma...).

Sometimes I also listen to noisli, or genre playlists (liked electroswing recently). I like to vary a lot, I just don't like rap/hip hop and dubstep.

[Mark Erikson]

Trance, primarily from DI.fm. I'm a big fan of their Vocal Trance and Epic Trance channels. I'm usually either streaming one of those two channels, or listening to songs I first heard on those channels and added to my collection.

[Wernich ️]

i like a variety of things classical or choir music, acoustic guitar tunes, classic rock, taylor swift, 80s...

but only if i'm coding. if i'm reading up on something, then i need silence. even violins are distracting. :)

[Anthony Delgado]

EDM ..... Daft Punk, Ship Wrek, Tobu, Marshmallow, Jinco, and a ton of other artists. Anything with a dope beat and not too many words to think about. I also have a tendency to listen to the same song on repeat for 12+ hours straight during coding sprints and Hackathons. That’s how I get into a flow state. 💯💯💯