in addition to the lofi/ambient, something I've really been enjoying recently is this lofi stream with random live air traffic control talk overlaid https://www.lofiatc.com
I don't really like thinking about what to listen to, so I use di.fm (an internet radio for electronic music) and just enjoy the endless stream of music. Some of my favorite channels:
Electro Swing - my absolute favorite, energetic and fast but improves focus
LoFi Hip-Hop - like the popular YouTube mixes but better curated and higher-quality
Liquid DnB - this is the middle ground between relaxing LoFi and energetic "Matrix" style coding music
It was really hard to find music I enjoy but I can also concentrate while listening to it. These 3 channels have been the absolute best for me in this regard. I hope you will like them too.
After years of trying different genres I found the best music for me: instrumental metal.
My go to artists are:
Andromida, for something hardcore
God is an Astronaut, for something melodic and chill
Outrun the Sunlight, TANK86, Modern day Babylon for the times when I want to listen to something else
anything that Spotify recommends
And my recent discovery: The HU. Mongolian band playing a mix of folk/rock/metal with a lot of throat singing. Since I don't understand Mongolian and throat singing is very uncommon for me, I just treat it as another instrument, and it can easily get me in the zone.
Nice suggestions! If you want something chill, I recommend David Maxim Micic or Plini. If you want something more technical, Polyphia and Intervals are all amazing.
I'd also like to recommend this Spotify playlist should you have it. Not drone, but a fantastic large scale selection of good background tunes and with nearly 7500 tracks I just put it on shuffle and let it go.
Is there a genre that's similar to that but instead of being relaxing it's energizing? I love the isolation that music provides but acerbate my daydreaming tendencies higher frequency beats would be better but it often includes distracting beat drops or sudden track changes
On that note (haha 🎶), I enjoy the "Pop Goes Classical" playlist on Spotify if I want to listen to something familiar and recent in pop culture, but played using classical instruments without distracting lyrics:
If it's something original like Mozart or Vivaldi, I get too enthralled with the classical scores, so backgrounding pop melodies over piano or string instruments is a compromise.
Weirdly I code not with music but with iPhone's background sounds feature. Usually it's Rain sound.
Also there are sites like https://asoftmurmur.com/ to fully customize your ambient sound.
I have 2 categories, either Classical Music ( actually my preferred classical programming music is The Legend of Zelda: Concert 2018 by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and I'm not entirely sure it qualify as "Classical" ) or 80-style hard rock (Like the soundtrack for Peacemaker)
In addition to LoFi that others have recommended, I'd also suggest Chillstep. Chillstep is mellow, rhythmic, but without all the artificial scratchs and pops common in LoFi.
This is a playlist I tried to replicate from memory of the playlists I loved to listen to back before Google bought and closed down Songza, a curated music streaming platform:
BTW, if anyone could provide a better genre classification of this playlist, or similar albums/artists, I'd be grateful! I had to piece this together from sampling song radio suggestions and auditory recall, as I can't recall names, nor bothered to make note of them when auto playing from Songza back in the day.
I tend to rewatch TV shows I've seen before in a quarter tile of my screen. Gives me that background noise and doesn't really distract me from work as I've seen the episodes before.
When I get bored of that, I like to fire up an EDM set on Youtube. An Armin Van Buuren set or something.