[GeeTwo]

Personally, silence is usually OK, though I occasionally get earworms. If I'm selecting the music, it's usually classic rock (broad range, 50s-90s plus some more recent), occasionally country, classical or show tunes.

At the team builds, we discourage headphones (it is a team event, after all). We usually have at least one boom box going (sometimes a second one outside) with someone's MP3 or Pandora plugged in. We get a bit of a lot of stuff - classic rock, modern, techno, alternative, alternative alternative (mostly from Jesse, Isaac, and a few of the students), and a bit of jazz. One of the students brought in his "fifties mix" a couple of sessions ago. There were some fifties tunes there, but most were older. It was a mix of rock & roll, western (from before it merged into country), big band swing, jazz, and more. At one of our "programmers sessions" late last build season, the students took turns picking songs. It eventually turned into a game of "find a song that five of the six of us like, but the sixth does not"; that one was all over the map.