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Home / Features / 9 best sites and apps for work music to focus to

9 best sites and apps for work music to focus to

From thunderstorms to Brian Eno, these sounds will help you rediscover focus in a world of office bluster...

You want to get on with something important, but people nearby are yammering on about football, someone next door is nailing everything in sight to the wall, and every animal in the vicinity has decided it’s time for an afternoon-long sing-song. Argh.

But you can drown out the chaos and focus on your work by donning headphones and firing up our recommended websites and apps. Happy listening (and working)!

First steps: find focus online

We scoured the web for a range of sites that pump all kinds of interesting noises into your head.

None of them needs Flash (spit), and all worked fine for us even on fairly creaky old hardware.

Best for adding colour and sound to your life: Noisli

Best for adding colour and sound to your life: Noisli

Noisli offers both audio and visual relaxation. The latter involves pleasant colour cycling that can make for a stress-busting background. Audio-wise, you trigger and mix top-quality loops comprising weather, water, trains, fans, and white noise.

Sign up (it’s free) to save favourite combos, set up timers, and use the site’s own text editor for writing. The only niggle is Noisli’s design requires quite a bit of scrolling, but there are Android and iOS apps if that irks. Alternatively, those with smaller screens can try the similar (but more limited) A Soft Murmur.

Visit Noisli

Best for nature lovers: Zenmix.io

Best for nature lovers: Zenmix.io

The idea behind zenmix.io is to immerse your ears in the sounds of nature – or at least ‘soundscapes’ inspired by nature. You get six in total, the first of which is all bells and ambient tones, like a track from a meditation CD escaped to the internet. Elsewhere, you get crashing waves, birdsong, and a forest at night, complete with crickets and frogs.

These rich sounds are low on bass – handy for drowning out local chatter. The interface is also pleasingly straightforward, with massive play/pause buttons on each of the options.

Visit zenmix.io

Best for imagining you’re in a movie: Tabletop Audio

Best for imagining you

This one’s primarily designed for tabletop role-playing games. Throw some weirdly shaped dice and end up precariously perched on a volcano, and you can click ‘Volcano’ to hear the sounds of your imminent lava-based bubbly demise.

But there’s plenty of interesting atmospheric fare lurking on this site for general work focus, and the more suitable tracks can be added to a playlist. Probably best don’t add Terror or Disembodied Spirits, though, unless you want relaxing work time replaced by a major case of the heebie-jeebies.

Visit Tabletop Audio

Best for screening out specific frequencies: myNoise

Best for screening out specific frequencies: myNoise

This big selection of streams, loops, beats and synthetic noises isn’t combined with the prettiest of designs, but there are great ideas here. Notably, you get a huge variety of sounds, from the usual rainfall, wind and birds through to tonal drones, industrial hums, and beat generators.

Rather than each sound playing in situ, any clicked link sends you to a page of explanatory text that includes presets and a graphic equaliser. This makes myNoise potentially useful for screening out specific frequencies, or creating something tuned to your own hearing.

Visit myNoise

Best for pretending you have friends: Coffitivity

Best for pretending you have friends: Coffitivity

For some people, hubbub isn’t something to block out, but instead a sound to embrace. General chitter chatter can for such souls be a boon to concentration and productivity. Which is a problem if you’re, say, a lone freelancer working in a shed.

Rather than hauling yourself over to the local coffee house and then finding it’s disappointingly empty bar one person hammering on a laptop like the keys individually need punching, Coffitivity brings the coffee house to you. Well, not the coffee – just the sounds bit, from Morning Murmur’s gentle hum to the French voices of Paris Paradise.

Visit Coffitivity

Best for listening to some actual music: Spotify

Best for listening to some actual music: Spotify

Nature and wind sounds are all very well, but some people need music to attain razor-sharp focus on their work. But what music? Nothing too distracting, for sure, and you don’t want too much singing nor constant starts and stops. *Bohemian Rhapsody* is right out, then.

Ambient(ish) and electronica often fit the bill, along with instrumental fare. Yet Spotify has over 30 million tracks to trawl through, so how do you find the really great stuff? By listening to Stuff‘s amazing work playlist below – that’s how.

Feel free to thank us when your productivity shoots through the roof (although not if our choices result in your laptop being hurled through the window).

Visit Spotify

Make some noise: the best DIY music apps

There are quite a few generative audio experiences knocking around the web, too, but most of them are rubbish.

To make your own chill-out music for focussing – or just happily collapsing in a heap for 20 minutes when everything gets a bit too much – check out this trio of fab apps.

Best for creating weird compositions: NobeBeat

Best for creating weird compositions: NobeBeat

One of the most visual music-creation apps around, NodeBeat has you create a kind of mesh from nodes and attached notes. Depending on your settings, notes may meander and switch node allegiance, leading to evolving music. Set-ups can be saved for later playback, and built-in examples handily showcase the app’s scope.

Download NodeBeat for Android (£1.18) and iOS (£2.29)

Best for pretending you’re Brian Eno: Scape

Best for pretending you

Having tested the water with noodly plinky plonky generative audio app Bloom, Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers went all in with Scape. Here, you get an entire ambient album to play, but can also use the same building blocks to fashion and save your own compositions in a pleasingly tactile manner.

Download Scape for iPad (£8.99)

Best for creating new music loops in seconds: Melodist

Best for creating new music loops in seconds: Melodist

If you’re feeling spectacularly lazy but still fancy some noodly background melodies to keep you in the zone, try Melodist. Load a photo from your device, and the app gets on interpreting it as a looping soundtrack. Tones and playback speed can be adjusted; and if you particularly like a track, you can export it to Dropbox. *

Download Melodist for iOS (£free + IAP)

Profile image of Craig Grannell Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.