I work as VP of Business Development for a consulting engineering firm, I also am a flutist (40+ years) and play semi-professionally in the Los Angeles-Orange County area.

My business life requires me to communicate clearly and effectively to clients, prospects, engineers, adminstration personnel, purchasing, co-workers and on occasion the public.

Playing semi professionally requires me to communicate clearly and effectively to the audience, stage performers, dancers, singers, other musicians and the conductor.

For me the goal in each environment is very similar… effective communication.

Listening to music when I work is distracting. Working at business when I perform music is distracting. (like that will ever happen -LOL ) However, if I’m relaxing – I have no problem listening to music.

For me, when listening to music my mind analyzes it. Come on I have 40 years of building neural pathways from musical performance, teaching music, and some composing. So, when I listen to music I hear pitch, tempo, rythmn, harmonic structure, tonality, timbre, ensemble, voicing, interpretation, etc.. My mind has a history of analyzing music. So to hear music when I work, these things come to mind and I get distracted from the task at hand.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings – which are more like white noise than music.

Cheers -

Good design music can also be project dependent as it can set the scene or create a mood and you might need an upbeat set of tunes for one and a more obscure set of tunes for something more abstract.

- M83
- Beta Band
- Kruder & Dorfmeister
- Kid Loco
- Sigur Rós
- Herbaliser
- The Avalanches
- St Germain

- John Williams / Hans Zimmer music Scores

So whether i’m designing or coding a website, struggling with that initial logo concept or just trying to get your head outside of that box music is essential.

I certainly believe that it depends on 2 things;
1) The work at hand – conscious (hard requiring concentration) or subconscious (easy par for the course work)
2) The music itself – genre / pace / vocals

1) There was a study mentioned above that involved a selection of people involved in retail work. Those that listened to music increased their productivity by 10%. Now basic retail shop floor work once learnt can be very easy without requiring much concentration. If the worker is starting to become bored of the job, lacklustre, then productivity will fall. Everyone enjoys music of some kind; so play music that the worker enjoys, then their mood will be happier and work may move along easier.

This is part of the sub-conscious comment above. Other jobs that can be done that are easy may well benefit from music to keep one focused and happy, data entry for example. However jobs that require real brainstorming and thought may well be disturbed and concentration hindered by music, ultimately a sound that we cannot ignore, that our brains through our ears must decipher and present to us.

2) Onto music. We all have our favourite genre. I personally love all kinds of music. My favourite being heavy metal and other heavy styles. A close second is progressive trance and other electronic music. Jungle, pop, ambient, jazz and many more. There is some music I can listen to when working on sub-conscious or generally easy work only.

For example, I can listen to trance music, usually fast paced monotonous music that exuberates speedy work without requesting my brain to pay attention to the obvious transition from verse to chorus like with pop music. I could not listen to Heavy Metal, or even Rock. ONE the attitude in this music does not encourage me to work! I cannot passively listen to this music.
TWO, it is not generally monotonous, with each change in section grabbing my attention.
THREE, and this an important point, vocals. Vocals in any music present a scientific challenge to us. Our ears are naturally refined to pay attention to vocals. Why? To understand we have to very briefly understand sound. Our brain through nerves and bones in our ear perceives sound through the vibration of particles in the atmosphere. So bang a table and the subsequent particles in the table and the surrounding atmosphere vibrate, and if we are close enough before the vibration peters out, our ears will receive the vibration and go onto do its workings and we hear sound. In music the pitch of a sound we think of as notes. The note/pitch of a sound is determined by the frequency, simply the speed of the vibration. Cutting corners in the explanation, our ears range for understanding frequencies runs from 20hertz (SUB-BASS) to 20 thousand hertz (khz) (let’s call high treble). Vocals male or female have their presence around the 2-3khz frequency. {check out ‘sound’ on Wikipedia} This level of frequency is what our ears are ‘tuned’ to. Afterall, we speak to each other every day! So we are very used to the speech frequencies. This frequency and other brash trebley sounds can disturb us and cause us to listen actively rather than passively. How many times have you tried ignoring the radio whilst working, only to start listening to what the presenter is actually saying?! It applies to music vocals too. It becomes harder to ignore and use music as background sound when vocals are present.

Other points were made in other posts that nicely sum up the music style issue, that I agree with. Instrumental music without vocals, steady repetitive beat or rhythm and a simple melody. I will try and particularly like one of the comments of listening to sounds like waves, rain etc, or other sound effects. So if you cannot have silence and must have some noise at work then that might work for you.

I through my education in music have studied composition of songs and the technical sound engineering side. I play Piano and Drums. This really can be a pain in the backside, as I no longer listen to music as I used to. If I’m not listening to the composition structure, instrument parts and so on, I’m listening to the mix by the engineer and the recording quality. So theres far too much that can distract me when listening to music. Those without a musical background certainly respond to music differently and I believe have a certain advantage when it comes to this issue of being distracted by music!!

As I mentioned, my personal favourite music to working to is trance music. Constant mixes though, as breaks between the songs can also be a cause for distraction when the new one starts. Because of its fast pace, it certainly gets me working and typing quicker. I just have to be careful it doesn’t get me in the mood for going out! Which is when the mind drifts from work!

There really are so many other points to this issue, and much more in depth explanations. But in general, listening to music you start singing to can certainly distract you if the work at hand really needs out of the box concentration. But definitely try it out. First try working with music that has vocals in and is very choppy with obvious verse, chorus sections. Pop is definitely sufficient for this. Then try it with steady, repetitive instrumental music without words. You may be surprised.

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Those of us capable of having more than one thought at a time tend to get bored doing menial tasks (and if you’re smart, pretty much everything is menial) so listening to music is a good way to occupy part of your mind.