Agreed! And there are lots of jumping off places in that list (e*vax is Evan Mast, half of Ratatat, Geotic is Will Wiesenfeld, best known for Baths, etc).
I just want to dump a handful of lesser-known artists to get people started...
When this was posted 2 weeks ago, I tried to step up and do the hosting with Amazon's Cloudfront. 72 hours and 3TB later, I sadly acknowledged that I didn't have the checkbook size to properly meet the download needs.
Since then, @datassette has moved hosting to Dreamhost and they're truly sticking by their unlimited bandwidth policy. So as much as we typically like to point out when DH is down or messes up, I think they deserve some public acknowledgement for doing something right.
The usual solution to this problem, when you're short on cash and need to push out a lot of gigabytes to a lot of people, is to put up a torrent. They're not just for piracy!
(Fun fact: if you host files on Amazon S3, it will also generate a torrent file and handle the seeding and tracking.)
I kept pushing that solution too, largely because I love the "here's another legal reason for torrent technology" proof that it gives, but it was important to datassette to be able to directly stream from the site and that isn't possible with a torrent.
Yes, both a magnet link and a direct link should be offered, and probably will be soon.
uTorrent allows streams in torrents. Interesting that they haven't made it a bigger feature, this has a large potential if it becomes a bigger part of the torrenting user interface. People complain that this stream download is bad for the peer cloud, but it could work very well if there's a single big server or two backing everything up- at the same time, taking a lot of bandwidth pressure off those servers.
Any of Brian Eno's ambient stuff
The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
The Field - Looping State of Mind
Luomo - Vocalcity
Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise
Burial - Untrue
I highly approve of Burial for programming music, and have some recommendations of my own:
Clubroot - Clubroot
Explosions in the Sky - Earth is Not A Cold Dead Place (and everything else)
Four Tet - There Is Love In You
Bonobo - Days to Come
Pretty Lights - Filling Up The City Skies
That said, I find I can listen to just about anything and program; Drum & Bass being one of my favorites to listen to. If you're feeling really adventurous and don't find anything non-ambient distracting, here is another list:
Unquote - Reverberation Box
Phace & Misanthrop - From Deep Space
Calibre - Calibre
High Contrast - Confidential
Probably too much listed here, but I'm an avid music listener (mostly of EDM); I also find that it keeps me focused when working.
It's funny, I never used to listen to drum & bass except when I went out, but these days it's pretty much all I listen to - while at work, on the bus, wherever. I guess that when you get enough exposure to a certain genre, you can find all different kinds of music to suit every situation just in that genre.
Phace & Misanthrop have been doing some awesome work! The Neosignal music is really great.
Gah! I didn't know Clint Mansell did the Moon OST. Must acquire. I have been listening for The Fountain soundtrack (by Mansell) while programming - and I love it. I also just discovered he did the Pi soundtrack.
Other OST picks: Tron (and Tron Reconfigured) and Nick Cave / Warren Ellis soundtracks - particularly The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Both the Inception and Social Network soundtracks are excellent - check out the Batman Begins soundtrack if you get a chance - I like a lot of Hans Zimmers soundtracks and really dig that one too.
I've experimented with different types of music while working/coding, and I've found the perfect thing that works well for me, which is soundtracks from RTS games. They're instrumental, vaguely electronic, and specifically designed to fade into the background and create a general sense of urgency and focus.
If you are a big Starcraft player for example, playing the background music from Starcraft can create a sort of Pavlovian Response, telling your brain "You are sitting at a computer carrying out a difficult task which takes a good deal of focus and mental exertion. This activity is fun and rewarding, and it is urgent that you do it as well and as quickly as possible."
But usually, I find myself incredibly productive when I listen to house music. My recent discovery has been Maceo Plex and the album "Life Index".
Maceo Plex merges the tracks into a continuous mix, roughly 128bpm, and once you skip track 1 (a dialogue), the music flows smoothly for a good 90 minutes.
Beyond that, I've always liked Kraftwerk's "Tour de France" for programming to.
I absolutely cannot listen to house music and work. As soon as I hear any kind of House I start dancing. I find it nearly impossible to listen to any kind of music and try to focus on working, but House is the worst, it invades my brain and body.
I do however, listen to tech-house or funky house tracks whenever I need to take a break from work. For whatever reason, house music makes me incredibly happy and energized.
My playlist contains both the Daft Punk Legacy OST and the TRON: Legacy R3C0NF1GUR3D[1] album which contains various artists remixing the Tron Legacy album.
Yes. Try the Submers and First Narrows albums, in particular. Every track on Submers is named for a famous submersible, so you're coding underwater listening to the plant noise.
If you've ever played Osmos on iOS, you've likely heard "Lucy Dub". It's track 2 on First Narrows.
I find myself listening to a lot of ambient/drone music while programming lately. Previously it was more upbeat with Daft Punk Legacy and Reconfigured. I feel I don't want to be concentrating on the music, but am comforted by having talk/silence removed.
Aerosol - All that is solid melts into air
Loscii
NASA voyager recordings - Symphony of the planets
Toe
For those who prefer radio, try WFMT out of Chicago---be warned, it is classical 24x7, but chosen and DJed by the best in the business. Easily available as iTunes->radio-> Classical->WFMT. As a change of pace, 5 hours of folk music on Saturday Night starting at 7:00 p.m. central time.
Daft Punk: Tron Sound Track, Tron legacy reconfigured
Particularly with music from The Glitch Mob I find my focus is more intense and I only break my current activity when the music finishes. Need to find more music that gets my mind in the zone like that...
I disagree. Datassette and Com Truise are seriously good music producers themselves. And I think both of them and Sunjammer have very good taste and listen a lot of music to be able to put together this kind of compilations. Pretty sure you can't find most of what they listen on iTunes.
Matter of taste. Keep that in mind and you'll become more respectful.
Commercial tripe? Lol. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm just sharing some nice mixes some friends and I have put together for working to, and paying actual money to let you listen to them for free. Have a bit of thought before you mash your banana hands against the keyboard kthx.
I listened to the Com Truise mix while programming the other day. It was too distracting, as the music kept changing every 2 or so minutes. Instead I prefer silence, or the next closest thing, which is the kind of music that really plays with your sense of time. E.g.
9 Beet Stretch
Mirror/Mimir (and other Christoph Heemann works)
Charlemagne Palestines
The Necks
I won't bother providing links, as the commonality with these artists is that their pieces are long (and in the case of the first one, very long), so you probably won't find any samples of this music that is indicative of the effect of the whole thing.
Where I work, we listen to BBC 6 Music (http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music). It's eclectic enough that no-one gets annoyed with the choice of songs (if you don't like one, you'll probably like the next) and there's nothing particularly noisy or distracting on there (loud over-processed pop/dance music, shouty DJs or ads). There's also far less repetition than on similar stations.
I'd much rather this, than one person's choice of "concentrating" music. One man's concentration aid is another man's hell.
I personally find The Necks very good for almost any kind of work. They produce minimal jazz, which I prefer to more distracting music — even if I might listen to it otherwise, such as electronic.
While their tracks are not available for free, you can find samples here:
"the most effective music to aid prolonged periods of intense concentration tends to have a mixture of the following qualities:" is too clinical to describe something as personal and emotional as music...
There tends to be enough ambient, non-lyrical tracks to keep me interested. Some infrequent breakcore tracks get me amped as either a break or a queue to think harder :D.
The style of music on the one that I downloaded didn't work so well for me. It was too airy and then there were some vocals.
I don't know what style to ask about. If I like to program to uptempo Jean-Michel Jarre and extended mixes of Blue Monday by New Order (the only track of theirs that I am aware that I like), what do I like and where can I get more of it?
Very nice and relaxing music. It's also nice that there is a podcast. But they could definitely make a simple cue-sheet or track list with song lengths – it is difficult to find a name for current song. Maybe miss of such metadata is a weakness of a podcast but at their site only a single track can be found.
I prefer higher energy music for coding. Stuff like Trance Around the World (http://www.trancearoundtheworld.com/), Jaytech, Myon & Shane 54 and Tritonal podcasts (all on itunes podcast directory)
I have recently become quite fond of Arvo Pärt and other classical minimalist composers, largely because I like the texture of piano and strings with the simplicity of minimalism while I'm working, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vdgZAJVnes
hey odddogmedia!
would love to work together somehow. we're created http://www.attictv.com and it would be great if we could somehow use your compilations :D
is there any way to get in touch?
e*vax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUlD79DCvA
Geotic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBeWuBBG0gw
Xela: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RsdMs-Whlo
Murcof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74spJD2oEPg
Shlohmo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SokFGXlIHM
Tycho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mehLx_Fjv_c