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JimTV on YT is great too

Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.

NTS radio has been incredible for programming music over the years. Deep backlog, an ambient channel (infinite mixtape: https://www.nts.live/infinite-mixtapes/slow-focus), and great selections:

https://www.nts.live/

And they have mobile apps :)

I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.

Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...

I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.

My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.

I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.

I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.

I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.

Radio Paradise has a fantastic high-rhythm, excepcionally-curated, sophisticated yet not too extravagant jazz channel called Beyond https://radioparadise.com/listen/channels/beyond

It is pretty much ideal for, as Larry Wall once said, letting music "wash over you" while coding https://youtu.be/SKqBmAHwSkg?si=_vHvP8Ij9lacwhFk

I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.

The first one is a 1-hour mix of "In Motion" from the soundtrack to The Social Network: https://youtu.be/bCxPmMbZjuk

The second is a 1-hour mix of "It Has to be This Way" from the soundtrack to Metal Gear Rising Revengance: https://youtu.be/jKGDib6qZBo

The third is a 1-hour mix of "Clock Tower" from the soundtrack to Dead Cells: https://youtu.be/plwhysPCxXI

Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/

In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins

Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum

I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays

ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.

This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.

If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.

Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.

I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.

Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.

For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.

[1] https://somafm.com/

If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfwdJx0NDE

Dark Synth or something like Juno Reactor for regular workload.

French hip-hop/rap to clean head while walking under rain.

Speed metal for for LLMing.

This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.

I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.

It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.

I remember back in 2012, thanks to the playlist #4 by Com Truise, I discovered Boards of Canada. I will always be thankful to Datassette for this project!

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Boards of Canada

Mr. Robot Original Soundtrack

Orbital's brown album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxa6Yv5dVk0

I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).

I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.

(Yes, I'm an only child.)

<3 music for programming

some personal favourites:

- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone

- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven

- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix

I love all the recommendations here. Great selection that I can add to my personal hacking background music. I can also recommend

- Pure Shakuhachi music (ignore the ones with 'relaxing' background music)

- Brian Eno

- Vangelis

- Hiroshi Yoshimura

I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.

But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.

For me nothing beats 90s ambient dnb for coding. There's something about drum and bass that really gets me in flow.

I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.

I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.

1. https://marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish

Do not see this one in the thread yet, found this on HN years ago and always in the weekly rotation

https://poolsuite.net/

Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.

https://m.youtube.com/@aimtoheadmix1915/videos

I just listened to the Matrix OST and that one really gets me into a coding mood!

Illuminoids, has to be.

https://archive.org/details/IlluminationRadio

Pick an episode with your rng of choice.

The Diablo II soundtrack on repeat

don't see it in the comments yet so: https://www.brain.fm/

When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.

I love instrumental only hip hop beats like shamisen x hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qi_-RmXz_g

I haven't played the game, but I like to have Baldur's Gate 3 soundtrack in the background sometimes (can be found on YT).

Oliver Huntemann - Propaganda Album

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLscdEjM7jiUsxRPIt7BUjzxpA...

Chillout channel on DI.FM: https://www.di.fm/chillout

I use gregorian chant for programming

I didn’t know about this. Worked for me, thank you!

Merzbow. Keep by fidget brain occupied with pure noise while I get real work done.

OPs playlist requires too many faculties used in coding.

The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.

Swing or Jazz for analysis and painting diagrams

Heavy Metal for actual development

Bossa Nova for deploying at 1 am

This is more like music for relaxation. I can't code without a strong rhythm.

Random Access Memories.

Here is some long-play stuff I do with code that helps write code https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/

dub techno, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@Scienide1995_Deep_and_Dub

I listen to post-rock.

There are usually no lyrics, there's an absolute ton out there, and something about the music gets my brain flowing better than other instrumental music.

I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.

Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.

That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.

This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..

I’ve found instrumental + slightly repetitive tracks work best for me — anything too dynamic pulls my attention away.

Lately it’s been a mix of ambient electronic and lo-fi, especially for longer deep work sessions.

I love progressive techno for this. No vocals and sounds are in the lower frequency range. Easy to tune out.

Iron Maiden for me :)

I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.

I personally love my classic/progressive rock and am happy to listen to it while working. It seems odd to limit music for programming to only lo-fi.

This is music for programming: https://velato.net/ (or music as programming??)

my go to coding playlist for years https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuvGj-9l_yXpuZwSqo...

My vibe coding playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFcwd2lzu8tujlF-tPg1EfXPU...

Look up Dub Techno.

Swans is good for programming. And good for gnosis.

Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnk_b_7trII

This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.

If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.

While I'm not surprised at the general tastes here in the comments (as I mostly share them), I am surprised at the lack of any mention of classical?!

Johann Johannsson and Max Richter are my go-tos.

I also recommend Datassette which is the 1-man band of the artist behind this.

kushsessions

This sight got me through many projects in college :)

Haha cool, very specific music though

For another genre suggestion: handpan music. It's rhythmic and repetitive, but warmer than electronica, and fades nicely in the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafSm6N5bkc

soma.fm Channel: DEFCON Radio Best programming music!

synthwave

Di.fm (Digitally Imported) has been my companion throughout the years

this is so much fun!

Can we play it for my LLM?

Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness

minecraft music is peak and takes all :)