i like having some background audio going, but nothing with lyrics. i have quite a collection of ambient, techno, edm music that has been growing since the mid 90s. ektoplazm has tons of free music to download. for streaming, groovesalad on soma fm is awesome and so is focus.fm.

i also like nature sounds and white noise apps. i have both white noise and ambie on my windows laptop. for streaming, i like mynoise.net and noisli.

there are others i can share if anyone is interested.

I write copy more than code, and find songs with lyrics tend to be distracting while writing if I focus on the lyrics. I tend to alternate between two things: Either I'll put one song on repeat (which then fades into the background after a bit), or listen to a soundtrack (Man of Steel's soundtrack is a favorite, has just enough dramatic and quiet moments to somehow give a nice rhythm to work with).

I find this to be highly dependent on the person. I listen to tons of different genres and types of music across coding, writing, etc., across a variety of albums and playlists. The key for me to find my flow is to use music I know very well.

These days, mostly Last Night on Earth by Sasha on the Apple Podcasts app. That's currently 69 episodes of about 2h.

When I want to focus always use music. Generally use SoundCloud to listen some deep house or lo-fi music. Just to day I've started the trial period in Endel App and so far is excellent.