It depends on my mood. I find productive music to almost always lack vocals. I will list some artists and their respective albums, of the top of my head. (subgenres) Many of these artists have great discographies.
Electronic
1. Glenn Underground - Atmosfear (house)
2. Aphex Twin - Ambient Works 85-92
3. Moby - 18
4. Space Dimension Controller - The Pathway To Tiraquon6 (soul-house)
5. Boards of Canada - Music has the right to Children
6. Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By
Post-Classical
1. Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
2. Ólafur Arnalds - ...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness
I'll echo this sentiment. Been listening to a lot of music from Mali and being really productive with it on. Highly recommend Khaira Arby, Ali Farka Touré and Amadou & Mariam.
Thanks! I will use it myself. Spotify is lacking some great music, that includes BoC. But, in general, I find myself using it more than I thought.
Shameless plug. I released an EP recently. I will be honest only two tracks are, what I consider, finished work. Track 2 and 5. But, still learning... fantasmafigueroa.bandcamp.com
We enforce this in the rules on our communal listening site, http://codingsoundtrack.org -- we like to think it's something to do with that part of our brains already being dedicated to understanding computer language.
I usually put 2 or 3 quiet electronic/trip-hop songs in my playlist and then I use the last.fm similar tracks to fill up the playlist, works quite well:
> I find productive music to almost always lack vocals.
This agrees with generally accepted psychological models. The mind is totally single-threaded in language processing/parsing (compared to incredible parallelism in spatial processing).
This is why I don't understand you can hear voices in the coffitivity vocals, you need music not to catch some (parts of) sentences here and there. I do like it so far though, on the note of music that is nice to code to try out Pretty Lights.
Got some of those in your list myself. More to include:
1) Eno - Music for Airports <br>
2) Kaen - Interworlds
3) Shulman - Random Thoughts. It's too engrossing the first few times. After that, pretty good for background music.
I can't recommend CAN highly enough. I've written code to their music since 2006 (with pauses when I couldn't stand it anymore). Their music ranges from kinda rock to kinda ambient but they usually have a solid beat which helps me concentrate and somehow makes me type faster since I try to align to it subconciously I guess. They also have minimal vocals, and if there're vocals, there're hard to understand since it is a gibberish of english, japanese, german, and made-up words.
I recently created a light playlist of CAN tracks that work well for getting into the music:
http://open.spotify.com/user/1218377486/playlist/5I4ZecZgYo9...
Apart from that, these two albums are also good for getting into it:
CAN - Tago Mago
CAN - Future Days
(Also, their music is from 1968 - 1973 but sounds very contemporary)
Edit: Lines
I'm surprised this hasn't been listed yet since it's usually a HN fav: http://musicforprogramming.net/ It's my go to at work whenever things get too noisy.
Lifeformed - Fastfall. I made this! It's my first album, I made it for the indie game Dustforce. It's electronic, chill, fakebit (8-bit chiptune sounds with a modern sheen), with some beats. Full album: http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/
Extremely anecdotal, but my silver bullets are jazz (modern soft jazz is great for this, but Kind of Blue [www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB669XXjnUg] has the advantage of being a landmark work AND incredibly relaxing) and really soft indie/folk (Blind Pilot, Iron and Wine, Noah & The Whale, that kind of thing.)
I love coding to jazz. "It can be played as background music, yet it amply rewards close listening" [0]. I collect records too, and jazz is one of my favorite genres to listen to on vinyl (although the distraction of the record flip can be a problem... sometimes I'll forget that it needs to be flipped at all, and I'll listen to the inner/lock groove for like 15 minutes before turning it off).
I find myself going between Digitally Imported's "Epic Trance", "Vocal Trance", and "Hands up" stations [1], but as soon as I can find my Tron Legacy soundtrack I'll be listening to the "Sea of Simulation" track on infinite loop.
I find a lot of ambient music without vocals is good (Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Nettless, etc...). Not too repetitive, but the sounds give a nice "mask" to the external world and lets you focus.
I also found an online radio station called "Moving Through Space" which provides some nice background ambiance when reading (esp. science fiction):
http://www.live365.com/stations/atombob
Well, I really doubt this will work for you, but as a metalhead I find abstract and atmospheric death or black metal works quite well for me (Lately I've been on an Agalloch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4ih3JVrRPE) kick).
Also I find that medium-intensity electronica will put me in the zone - Deadmau5, Justice, etc.
The best music for me when trying to be productive is music that I least pay attention to and concentrate on enjoying. If the music is too interesting then I get distracted. So for me: techno.
Electronic
1. Glenn Underground - Atmosfear (house)
2. Aphex Twin - Ambient Works 85-92
3. Moby - 18
4. Space Dimension Controller - The Pathway To Tiraquon6 (soul-house)
5. Boards of Canada - Music has the right to Children
6. Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By
Post-Classical
1. Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
2. Ólafur Arnalds - ...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness
3. Max Richter - Memoryhouse
4. Nico Muhly - Speaks Volumes
Pop/Indie/Jazz
1. Royksopp - Melody AM
2. The Album Leaf - In a Safe Place
3. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
4. Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
5. Benoit Pioulard - Lasted