Music for Programming

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.

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/

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.

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.

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

OPs playlist requires too many faculties used in coding.

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

<3 music for programming

some personal favourites:

- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone

- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven

- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Random Access Memories.

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

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

soma.fm Channel: DEFCON Radio Best programming music!

Swans is good for programming. And good for gnosis.

This sight got me through many projects in college :)

minecraft music is peak and takes all :)

Look up Dub Techno.

this is so much fun!

Iron Maiden for me :)