Does anyone know of any actual conclusive studies in this area? Like most here, I have my own rules and preferences. The main rule seems to be it must be familiar, in fact it's best if I've heard it a thousand times already. But there are only three kinds of music that work for me:-

1. Music I first got into during my teenage years when I was sitting up all night coding assembler (OK, I admit it, Pink Floyd) works well because I think my mind is conditioned in an almost Pavlovian way to go into programming mode when I hear it;

2. Ambient EDM works well because it is very repetitive and doesn't have any strong lyrical structure - my trouble is, as an old fart, I find only a very small subset of the vast range of EDM that I actually like.

3. A certain kind of loud, wall-of-sound rock music which is very heavy on distortion with subdued vocals works well but only at night.

Received opinion says classical music is good for cognitive tasks, and I've tried over the years but never good great results.