Maybe everyone already knows this, but I just figured out you can ask Siri on your phone to identify music playing in the background. No need to load an app; similar function is built in to Android, too. But further coolness: if you go into the iPhone’s iTunes Store app, tap Menu upper left, then tap Siri, you get a list of all your queries so that, of course, if you want to buy the music, there it is. At least it’s a way to record/remember the new tunes. — KK

When doing interviews, I like to have a transcript of the conversation. This is useful for fans of podcasts, and for journalism. The best transcripts are done by humans, but I can get very cheap, very fast transcripts that are 90-95% accurate done by AI. (Depends on quality of recording and accents.) Temi will give me a transcript for 10 cents per minute of audio ($6/hr), delivered in about an hour turn-around. The Word doc or PDF output will have time stamps on it, making it easy to go back to find the actual audio for correction if needed. The Temi transcript is accurate enough to find key passages; with one listen-through I can quickly clean it up for public consumption. — KK

Sleeping Dragon is a generative music application, available for free on Mac and Windows. You adjust sliders, and the software creates a unique piece of never-ending music. I listen to it while I work. If you don’t want to download the software, you can just listen to the calming sounds it generates on its website. — MF

Some of the best music being written these days is for movie soundtracks. Because they usually lack dialog and lyrics, I find movie scores easy to listen to while working. If you want some suggestions to start with, this is a decent list of the best scores since the start of this century. Quite a few of them are available on Spotify. — KK

Get free, high-quality sound effects of almost anything you can think of for your podcasts, apps, or movies at Freesound. — MF

I’ve been using the SoundHound smartphone app for years to identify songs, but my 15-year-old told me to switch to Shazam. She’s right, it’s much easier to use the features that I need. My favorite way to use: If I’m in a store or a coffee shop that’s playing unfamiliar music that sounds great, I just press the large button on the screen and it will grab the title and artist of every song and save it for later. I can then easily add the songs to Apple Music (you can also save to Spotify) and save them to my library. — MF

The free NaturalReader smartphone app (iOS and Android) converts text to speech. To use it, open the app, select a document from DropBox, Google Reader, or a website. NaturalReader will upload it and read it in a voice of your choosing. — MF

VoiceBase takes audio recordings and turns them into text. It also analyzes the text to identify subjects and keywords, and can play back the audio as it highlights the text. It’s not as good as a human transcriber, but it does a decent job and is much cheaper (2 cents a minute compared to $1 a minute for a human).You get $60 in free credit to try it out, too. — MF

The broadway hit Hamilton is worth attending in any mode. Tickets are precious and rare, but anyone can download or purchase the musical soundtrack by the original cast. Its super popularity is not just hype: Hamilton is as great as any Shakespeare play. The lyrics are topical, timeless, profound, and linguistically witty. The entire 2.5 hour play is sung, so there are 46 songs, each one memorable. You may have heard that much of it is in rap, with different characters rapping in their own style. It’s an incredible experience just in audio. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve listened to it, but each time I derive more understanding of that period of American history, more appreciation of early American culture, and more heartbreak about the biography of a political icon. And you can sing along! If you eventually are able to get reasonably priced tickets to some version of the performance, my tip is to listen all the way through the album at least twice before you go. This play is so dense with layers, and so packed with powerful language, that your enjoyment will be multiplied by 10 each time you pre-listen. — KK