Impact of music on mood

I'm sure that there are volumes of research on how music and other inputs might or might not impact peoples mood or feelings. I'm not any sort of expert on the topic, but I will say that I have been listening to two different "chillout" mix stations on Pandora at work and I feel more relaxed when I'm here.

As far as typical listening habits go, I most often listen to music while driving or while at work. When I'm driving, I like something as background noise to make it a little less boring for my 1.5 hour drive (each way). As far as work, I work in an open (cube farm type) office and I find that if I don't put earbuds in I end up distracted by other people's endless clicking on Minesweeper games, phone conversations, discussions where I feel like I can give input but don't really need to, etc.

So, listening to music helps me to stave off boredom and focus... but what type of music do I typically listen to?

Generally, I favor rock, hard rock, metal, punk, alternative with a little bit of pop and electronic music thrown in... but I found that I'd get too into more aggressive music at work where even that was starting to get a little distracting to me.

While driving I've just started listening to audiobooks, which has been going okay so far. I'm not sure if audiobooks will be a long term change or not, but I've found myself feeling like my commute takes less time while listening to parts of a larger whole, rather than dozens of songs.

At work, I ended up listening to the aforementioned "Chill/Downtempo" and "Downtempo" stations on Pandora and by giving various tracks the thumbs up, I've ended up with some nice bass-heavy but mellow mixes that can blend into the background but don't get completely drowned out, are interesting enough to not be boring and don't make me feel too amped up, like the more metal music I typically listen to can do. (If anyone is interested in some example tracks available on Pandora, leave a comment and I'll post some up.)

Note: This post was moved over on 01/02/2015 from another of my blogs that I shut down.