4d ago

What kind of music do you listen to?

IRL, I once listed my favorite bands across metal, rock, hip-hop, electronic, and drum n bass and was hit with "that's standard programmer music".

As someone with little physical human contact outside of work and actually meeting devs outside to find out they listen to the same music was a little surprising. That was a tiny sample though and this is the web though and people are from all over, what kind of stuff do you listen to? Favorite genres, artists, or just "everything" even noise?

53 comments

Mostly:
Halftime and future bass, stuff like ivy labs and mad Zach, and two fingers
90s alternative like pixies, nirvana, aic.
30s and 40s jazz and blues

Most of the music I listen to fits under the alternative umbrella. While I never actually spent a lot of time directly on /mu/ that type of online music culture circa ten years ago has been very influential on my music taste. A couple of years ago I also had a big emo phase, in particular 90's emo and 10's emo revival. I also listen to a lot of punk and post hardcore.

Mostly golden age hip hop, metal and its various subgenres (heavy metal, doom metal, death metal etc), classic rock, indie, post-hardcore, and pop-punk

I'm an open format DJ, so I listen to everything except Hick Hop, and that annoying sub-genre of electronic music that consists of little more than someone repeating the same word or phrase over a simple drum beat. Have no idea what it's called, but kids under 30 seem to love it and I just don't understand why.

Progressive metal & related genres (currently listening to the newest Eidola album on repeat, and some Dance Gavin Dance), and bebop jazz.
But I don't program; I'm mostly cleaning up artwork for commercial printing.

Polyphia typically

Mainly black and old school death metal. Also some ambient and contemporary classical.
- Yes. Plus Bohren und der Club of Gore, which is Slowest Black Jazz
  
  Absolutely! Black Earth gets semi-regular rotation around these parts too.

Why manually enumerate when I can show you all the data ;)
- Clicked when you were listening to pink pony club, awesome song
  
  Hah that was in my listenbrainz recommendations
- That looks really interesting, thanks for sharing

I like to listen to human music:
Human Music
- Ahh yes, human music. I like it.
  
  My man!

I code in silence.
But when I listen to music I REEEEAALLYYYYY L I S T E N. Stuff like Tool, Coin Locker Kid, Kaoru Abe - and I find it impossible to concentrate on code while those play, they mentally drag me in.
- Same. I can't even have understandable lyrics if I'm going to concentrate.
  My work playlists are completely different. More cinematic scores, world music, ambient whatever. There is some metal that bridges the gap, but it has to be very death.
  
  I've started listening to stuff like Babymetal because it's in Japanese and my brain doesn't get distracted by words in a foreign language.

I listen to everything. My main jam is melancholic singer-songwriter stuff or songs that tell stories, but I also listen to electronic, metal, folk, world music, whatever I enjoy. Last year my most-played stuff was Nothing Else Matters from the Wednesday soundtrack (0.01%), Sabaton (0.1%) and Japanese enka songs. The year before it was German singer-songwriter Anna Depenbusch, who I had just discovered.

Mostly rock & metal (Examples being: Architects, Beartooth, Chaosbay, While She Sleeps, Dark Tranquillity, Ice Nine Kills, Periphery, Babymetal, & Hanabie.. Though, throw a piano solo in and I'm sold (Corelia's "Treetops", for instance — I need to explore more symphonic metal. Not that Corelia is– anyway).
With that said, I've also got a few outliers that mostly include game & TV OSTs (Hoyo-MiX, Crush 40, kessoku band). Add in a few tracks from LiSA, and "Ghost" by Hoshimachi Suisei & the cover by Rachie to really leave my Spotify Recommended dazed & confused.
TL;DR: The spectrum of rock & metal all the way from Incubus to Lorna Shore, with sprinkles of J-Pop, Electronic, & random OSTs to really hospitalize my Spotify Recommended.
- Babymetal is probably the best head down coding music I've ever experienced, have listened since 2016 or so

Mostly Bach and MASTER BOOT RECORD.
- MBR is on my coding playlist for sure

Hardstyle, (Electronic) Hardcore, DnB, Trance. Don't really mind metal etc either, but I generally don't listen to it myself. Most pop music bores me because it's too slow. I need speed and intensity but I don't really mind repetition.

Techno, dubstep, various game OST's, some metal, orchestral, and various pop songs my partner turned me on to. Quite a few touhou remixes too.

Stuff like Tycho - Dive for when I really need to focus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXOYfZMR0w

I mostly listen to powermetal, symphonic metal and some rock. But I'm no programmer, I'm a sysadmin.

I need something without understandable lyrics (unless I've listened to that song many times before) and something that pumps me up, but doesn't cause headaches. So, 8-bit music and cheesy / 'epic' cinematic scores work well.
Well, unless it's 4 o'clock in the morning. Then nothing beats classical music. I'm never as productive as I am at 4 AM, listening to Beethoven and friends.

I usually don't, which is completely sacrilegious as a musician, but I'd rather be playing it myself ¯(ツ)_/¯
If I do bother, it is usually Broadway (have not seen that here yet!), the pop music of my childhood, classical, classic rock, or anything I have ever performed before. Around Christmastime I have a dedicated Christmas playlist which is just Christmas songs.
50/50 if I can have music on while programming. Sometimes it becomes background noise, sometimes my brain starts focusing hard on the music and I need to not have that.

When programming I tend to like music that is instrumental, like synthwave and chiptunes, as well as some light on vocals trip hop and industrial. I can listen to rock and metal too, but it tends to grab my attention more than I like when I am trying to get in the zone.
- Yeah, same. Post-metal or thereabouts towards jazz can work too IME. Stuff like Russian Circles, Earthless, Elephant9. But stuff like Waveshaper and Amynedd are often safer bets.

Depends on what I’m trying to achieve. Coding something that requires less thinking but staying more focused and keeping up energy - techno, EBM/industrial, phonk. If it requires more cognitive effort, I choose more background-ish music like lo-fi hip hop. When not coding - same plus synthwave/vaporwave, jazz, funk

When I'm trying to focus I tend to listen to System of a Down or Rammstein. The rest of the time it tends to be pop music from the radio (usually BBC Radio 1) or lofi.

Either https://musicforprogramming.net/ , some vaporwave, some really extreme/cavernous death metal or noise rock. Free jazz. Possibly some instrumental kraut rock if I feel like it, the motorik beat is great for focus.

Anything without lyrics. Same as others have said: synthwave and similar are great. Game soundtracks. Orchestra albums. Some metal.
Movie soundtracks are a another great resource for lyric-free music that haven't been mentioned much yet.

I like dungeon synth; particularly, the comfy synth subgenre
Retro synth stuff is also nice
I also enjoy various fusion stuff

Pretty much anything EDM and a lot of hip-hop/rap. Some 90-2000s rock tossed in too

IT is not known to be a very diverse field, so I guess it’s not surprising that some music would be more popular with our crowd.
I like post-punk, post-rock, shoegaze, synthpop, electronica, dungeon synth, ambient, chanson française, that’s mostly it. If I had to pick one all time favorite band Cranes would be it. Discovery of the moment is Dry Cleaning.

While coding for the past 2 years: Scooter. Normally my favourite genre of music is German Medieval Folk Power Metal.

Trance/sextrance, scenecore and weird underground soundcloud rap

Drum and bass and electronic music. Techno if I want to finish something really fast. Lot of stuff without lyrics.

I feel like it's very varied, but I'm not one to listen to metal or much rock. What I listen to changes from time to time.
I know the meme/prejudice of programmers listening to metal, and having long hair. I can't say I've ever felt like it was confirmed or justified. But it's not like I have that much exposure or insight to many either.
I'm not even sure I can list genres; I feel like it'd be too many and unspecific anyway. Chillhop, chillsynth, hip-hop, deep house, some pop, some german and japanese music, some chiptune, some classics of the last century; some are shared on https://soundcloud.com/kissaki

Good Kid, Phoneboy, Chappell Roan, Charlie XCX, Andrew Garden, Landon Conrath, Mickey Darling, Kevin Walkman, Troye Sivan, Boygenius
I think those are the main ones. Also "Halloween" by Novo Amor is a banger

https://youtu.be/g4JQ7vIxdvw

Rap mostly.
When programming however, Chill Lofi HipHop beats to study/relax to. Words distract.

The Rippingtons, various mod trackers and some other things.

It's probably easier to list what i don't listen to: most country, hip-hop, rap, overly-noisy metal (where you can't really understand what the singer's grunting about), most pop.
Lately i've been listening mostly to Tool, Jinjer, Asian Dub Foundation and Thievery Corporation.
Tomorrow, who knows, maybe Madredeus or Garbage (the old stuff).

The Tunic OST if I actually need to focus on what I'm writing.

I listen to DJ sets from DJs of São Paulo mainly (I'm living in São Paulo now), because I like to know the local techno scene. The main genres that I like are Funk (from São Paulo, check out DJ Bonekinha Iraquiana), electro (check out Cashu), techno (check out Kontronatura) and some house (check out DJ Bassan and Delcu)

Right now, a lot of MUNYA

53 comments