Our office always has music playing in the background.
Perhaps...current hits to start the day…mid-morning Motown…90s throwbacks over lunch…drum ‘n’ bass for a late afternoon pick-up…AC/DC to send us home with a spring in our step. Or any other combination of genres! Music helps us throughout the day and it is really noticeable if it isn’t on. We play everything through Spotify or Apple Music, over a couple of Sonos speakers; and there has been a lot of trial and error because we want the music to be loud enough, but not too loud.
Today (21st June 2021) is World Music Day, and a chance to acknowledge that we are all different and all enjoy a diverse range of music. For some of us, we can’t work without it. For others, it may be a distraction. Personally, I love a range of different music, but at work I prefer to have music in the background that has a decent uptempo beat but is otherwise the aural equivalent of wallpaper. It's there, it helps with the atmosphere, but I'm not going to be too distracted by it.
At Next Phase our musical tastes cover the whole range from House to Punk, Classical to Ska, and Pop to Death Metal, and it is great to acknowledge and celebrate these differences (at different times of the day, of course).
What’s your choice for your office stereo? Do you listen to music when you work from home? What kinds of music do you find really improve your concentration?