Anyone else spend way too long finding the right focus music?
2 samuraikmc 12 6/25/2025, 6:53:09 PM
I've been getting increasingly frustrated finding good background music for work. Ads interrupting flow, spending forever choosing playlists, inconsistent audio quality, among many other smaller peeves.
Curious if others have similar issues, so I put together a quick survey about how people use music for focus and workouts: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxfFY5_mueTHuZr2_hZqPcMWI6esjSY9Pk6U0Q4d_Ss4lKYg/viewform?usp=dialog
It should only take about 3 minutes and covers what platforms you use, your biggest frustrations, and what an ideal solution would look like.
Happy to share the results back with the community once I get enough responses!
I need noise and not vocals. I hunt for artists here: https://www.music-map.com/
Usable finds this week: Yomi Ship, sleepmakeswaves, Mt.Mountain.
Discards this week: Lord Loud, Phil Thorton, Luciferian Light Orchestra, Liquid Sound Company, Gandalf, black midi, Jadu Jadu, Jagannatha.
The latter aren't bad at all, just not a good fit.
> What would you like to see in a good solution?
Tidal is in the right position to be a solution but it's recommendations, playlists and UI all need improvement. They're not useless but fall well short of what they're capable of.
To expand on that, I should note that crafting playlists for others is hard. A large selection of playlists is the way to go and maybe a voting system.
I think Tidal's playlists are curated by their users - which is good. But given the size of Tidal's userbase, the selection of playlists is thin. IDK why that is; I haven't tried to make my own playlist.
I searched for sleep playlists on tidal and found 2. One seemed like it's creator had never experienced sleep. Some of the tracks would have made decent alarms.
For a free discovery system, music-map is pretty good. I used Gnoosic long ago but it's primitive. I don't know what else is out there.
I have my own music server and so don't use streaming services. Therefore, I have no issues with ads or audio quality. The music in my library is tagged, and "focus" is one of the tags. I have an auto-playlist that just randomly plays tracks that have that tag. When I add new music to my library, I also add the tags.
It works extremely well for me. Zero friction and I always get the music I want.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxfFY5_mueTHuZr2_h...
Could I kindly request you to fill out this survey.
Regarding your own server, that's very interesting. So a DB of mp3 files that are tagged? And then simply suggested to you with seamless playback? Any further details you can share? Not trying to pry but generally curious.
I have a machine running Kodi as my music server, using a high-quality external DAC for the output. That allows me to play directly through my stereo with the native UI as well as stream to my phone or over a web interface to any computer. Although with my phone, I rarely stream. I usually just download a selection of albums so that I don't have to have internet connectivity to listen to them.
> So a DB of mp3 files that are tagged?
A mix of MP3 and FLAC. The MP3s were added to my collection years ago. I switched to FLAC after that. But yes, all tagged. Not with great detail -- my tags are Focus, Party, Mellow, and NoPlay (NoPlay means that it's not suitable for randomized playing -- I have some nonmusical tracks that I don't want coming up at all when I'm listening to music) [I edited this because I forgot that I switched my system from a tag saying "this is music" to the NoPlay tag].
> And then simply suggested to you with seamless playback?
I have dynamic playlists that key on the tags. The playlists are a random selection of tracks with the respective tag [or, with NoPlay, a selection of tracks without that tag]. The way it works is that the playlist always has 20 items, so you can see the next 20 tracks coming (and remove them if you wish). When a track is removed from the playlist, because you removed it or it was played or skipped, then enough random tracks are added to the end to bring it up to 20 again.
I've been doing this for 30 years or so (not always using Kodi, of course), so my music collection is very large and encompasses a wide range of genres. According to Kodi, it would take about a year and a half of constant listening to listen to everything in the collection. And I'm constantly adding more as I find music I like.
All of my collection is kept on a NAS.
Hope this helps! I don't mind sharing any further details. None of this is terribly sensitive information. :)
Same except I can't find jazz to sleep by (tinnitus). Redditors endlessly suggest the same 6 albums - and they're no good for sleep 20 min in.
Regarding your comment, is that more of a medical condition that you are trying to overcome? Or simply trying to fall asleep easier?
The former has potential to become become distressing but is trivially treated with distraction. Drugs are my primary goto for the latter but the right music/noise is a real help.
I have no consistent good focus music.
Over time I've found crating lots of different playlists helps cut down the cycling.
Regarding your comment: Yeah, I have tried that too but it eventually ends up being too much friction and effort to maintain.
Eventually I reached a volume that cut down on the amount of searching I do as old lists become tolerable again.