Coffee Shop — Cafe Jazz & Lofi Ambience

Coffee shop ambience as a genre exploded around 2014 when researchers at the University of Illinois published a study showing moderate ambient noise (~70dB, roughly a busy café) boosted creative output. The site Coffitivity built itself around that finding, and YouTube quickly filled with hours-long mixes pairing café field recordings with smooth jazz piano and soft brushed drums. This one sits comfortably in that mode.

I work from cafés a lot, and on the days I can't I put one of these on. The trick is that the chatter has to stay unintelligible enough that your brain doesn't try to follow conversations. The mix here gets that balance right, with enough musical content to keep things from feeling like pure white noise.