Should You Listen to Music While You Code?

Depending on your project, listening to music can complement a lot of different kinds of coding.

Having a bad day and need a quick mood boost to get into the right headspace for work? Throw on a favorite song or two.
Stuck on a problem or in a creative rut? Play some music to help disrupt your thinking and potentially find a new solution.

Spending a day doing repetitive work that’s less than stimulating? Play music to make rote tasks go faster.
And if your work for the day requires heavy focus, you might just want to skip music altogether, or only turn it on when you’ve stepped away for a break. Keep in mind the best way to reap the benefits of music while coding is to choose the right music for the situation, which is sometimes no music at all.

How to Choose the Right Music for Coding

Here are a few guidelines for choosing the right music to complement your work.

1. Avoid Music with Lyrics

Since lyrics can be a huge distraction, choose music that doesn’t have any to maximize your concentration while you code.

2. Choose Music in a Language You Don’t Understand

Lyrics are so distracting because your brain wants to comprehend what they’re saying. If the lyrics are being sung in a language you can’t speak or understand, they’re less likely to demand your brain’s attention.

3. Listen to Music that’s Super Familiar to You

Alternatively, listen to music you’ve listened to so many times before, you know every word, every beat, every pause. If your brain knows what to expect, it won’t be surprised and the music will be less of a distraction.

4. Keep Your Music Low-Fi

With all this in mind, you might think classical music is a natural choice. In fact, there are studies that show that listening to classical music boosts things like concentration and academic performance. But not all classical music is good for work, either.

If you choose a classical track that’s dynamic in its volume changes, coming to swelling crescendos that give you goosebumps, it will be — you guessed it — distracting.
To avoid anything that tears your mind away from the task at hand, you need music that stays consistent in its volume and beat, so it can fade into the background as you hit your work groove.

5. When Taking Breaks, Forget all the Rules

Engineers need to take breaks. And while you’re on a break, forget all the music rules. Take full advantage of the fact that you can play whatever music you love, at whatever volume you want (as long as you’re not, you know, disrupting the entire office). When you head back to work at the end of your break, you’ll be able to do so with a boosted mood courtesy of your musical interlude.

6. Let the Professionals Choose the Music for You

Still not sure what music you should put on while you code? Naturally, there’s a tech tool for that.

There are a number of sites and apps that offer playlists curated specifically to promote better focus and productivity, but we particularly love Programmer’s Music, which features non-vocal, distraction-free songs timed to the Pomodoro Method, another cool trick programmers can use to boost their productivity.

To Listen, Or Not to Listen?

At the end of the day, there’s no right answer to this question. There’s plenty of science touting the benefits that come with listening to music at work, and there’s plenty of science that says tunes are just another potential distraction. You know yourself and your work style. Feel free to experiment with playing music versus working in silence.

Try out different genres and see how you feel about the work and the code you produce. Experiment with music at work, but if you find that your playlist just distracts you, that’s OK. No one method works for every engineer.

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