What's the best strategy for team room music?

Question

Members of my team often dislike the music taste of others. All they can agree on for a while is radio, but all are kinda dissatisfied by that. And there are members who can't concentrate at all when there's music. Headphones for everyone? Any other idea? (no, not put them in different rooms, b/c they're supposed to be a team!)

Answer 1

A jukebox server with music choosen by the entire team.

Answer 2

Headphones. Probably the cheapest and most effective solution.

Answer 3

Um, headphones. No worrying about telephones, lyrical content (just as a visitor walks past), etc.

Answer 4

Definitely headphones. Then if you need to get someone's attention, you have IM. If your company is buying them for everyone make sure they don't get shoddy quality headphones. I was at a company that provided some cheap headphones and I quickly replaced them with my own because the quality sucked.

Answer 5

Really, headphones is the only proper solution, and they really aren't such a bad one. With a little bit of cash and know-how you can get yourself some very crisp and clear headphones.

I know myself that I hate listening to other people's music, sometimes I don't feel like listening to music at all, so being an ass and playing any kind of music to a developer that doesn't want it is a huge kick in the balls for productivity imo.

Answer 6

Um...not to seem dense, but...what is the point of a "Team Room" if everyone in it is isolated unto themselves with headphones?

Answer 7

Metal. All the time.

Answer 8

Headphones

Answer 9

One thing I have seen work well is to have time slots and have each team member own the choices for their time slot. That could be music or silence. Their choice. This seems to work for most situations. And sometimes you might just get exposed to music that you wouldn't have otherwise heard... :-)

But this is about the larger subject of team dynamics. People DON'T agree all the time, and this is just another team norm you all need to decide upon together. Unfortunately, with most team norms, they won't suit everybody all of the time. As long as you have a team norm that makes each person happy a balanced and fair amount of the time, that is the best you can ask for.

Answer 10

Here’s the “rules” we use in the patterns & practices team rooms:

• Music rotates each hour
• Everyone gets an hour to play the music they want
• At the end of the hour someone else gets the next hour
• At any point anyone can say “next” and the current song gets skipped
• You cannot say “next” repeatedly

Other options include letting Pandora pick for you or playing KEXP, probably the best radio station going.

I’ve only seen this really break down once and what can I say… some really bad folk rock was involved and Bob and I had been having a rough day with some code. So Sorry.

Answer 11

In my team I dictate the music, which is Fip Radio all day (http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/fip/endirect/), because it's the only radio that's unobstrusive enough to let you do some work, and that is eclectic enough (ACDC, Bach, Muse, Keith Jarrett, Archive, they can put all this in the same hour) to please most....

Everyone has headphones but at the end of the day we enjoy the feeling of working to the same tune (and it's quite important to be able to speak at people without shouting because of the headphones)

Answer 12

Get everyone on the team to name their 5 favourite musicians/artists, then go to Last.fm, Yahoo Music, Pandora or whatever and create a radio station that plays music by those artists in random order. That way everyone's happy, everyone gets to know some new bands, no one can complain that they're being forced to listen to crap since others are going through the same thing, and you build the team by creating a common discussion point ("Rahul's music taste is atrocious, I wish he would just leave"). :-)

Answer 13

A pair of good noise-cancelling headphones

Answer 14

I think that headphones are the only proper solution because some people are distracted by music and some people are aggravated by certain songs or music that doesn't fit their current mood.

For example, I listen to different stuff when I'm coding, refactoring, or debugging. The wrong music can throw me off.

If you let people be DJs for the others, you're going to run into problems. One person would like rap with offensive lyrics. Another person would listen to Christian rock and offend everyone. Another person would be into Christmas music as early as Halloween, while others prefer to listen to talk radio.

Answer 15

Noise canceling headphones. I picked up a pair of Sony's for about $40 that I personally think work as well as more expensive ones. The problem is that some people like to code in absolute silence - and I even knew a developer who worked to nothing in her headphones other than a recording loop of white noise.

Team building activities are great, when they don't impose on people in a way that can potentially compromise the quality of their work. I listen to progressive metal and old-school punk on a regular basis. One of my developers only listens to jazz. Another listens to hip-hop. And yet another listens to something in a language that I have never even heard before. Sometimes diversity is good and should be maintained - music is culture and a form of self-expression. Focus on integrating good habits and lessons that can be learned from, but don't try to turn everyone into a cookie-cutter representation of each other. At least that is my opinion. :-)

Answer 16

I believe the correct answer is "it depends". If it is not a small team (3-4 people), the only obvious answer is headphones.

If the team's musical tastes are generally aligned, then maybe all that is needed is to take turns playing CDs (or iPods or whatever). There is definitely a community/team-building effect to everyone enjoying the same music together. Another alternative would be to use something like Ampache using the "democratic" mode. The caveat to all of this is that any can, at any time, turn the music off until further notice if it is needed.

Answer 17

Put them in different rooms.

Concentration is much more important than an "I-read-a-book-on-Agile-once" idea about how to organize a team.

Answer 18

I had a chance working in a team which played music open air. It was horrible. Our music tastes were orthogonal and it was a pain listening to something that you truly hate.

Decent headphones is the only real strategy.

Answer 19

Absolutely no "team" music. Headphones are the way to go. They are still a team, even if they are wearing headphones. The best way to do it is give everyone their own office with a door and great big windows. Then they can go ahead and play whatever they want!

If they want to chat with each other, they will. You could leverage MSN Messenger or just let them send emails around. Whatever works for that team. You don't want to implement an environment which hinders productivity.

Answer 20

Obviously headphones. Getting everyone to agree on one kind of music, or even getting everyone to agree on listening to music at all is out of the question. Personnally, I sometimes needs to listen to music to work better while other time I need to listen at nothing at all and can't concentrate with music on.