Some writers like the background burble of a coffeeshop; some like to jam in some earbuds and listen to music. Count me in the latter group.
(And some freaks demand pure silence. Sorry, freaks. But you’re freaks.)
The point is make writing conditions productive. A lot of people hone their playlist so that it reflects a specific mood or genre that they’re writing in. For instance, as Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg wrote their now-concluded Cornetto trilogy, they used music that conjured the atmosphere they were trying to create. Action scores for Hot Fuzz. Horror scores for Shaun of the Dead. And for The World’s End, a playlist of pop songs from 1988-1993.
For me, it doesn’t work that way. Despite buying Basil Paledoures’s soundtrack for Conan the Barbarian, it hasn’t given an epic edge to my action scriptwriting. And Ennio Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West hasn’t imbued my western script with a Leone-ian jarring violence. Mostly because I can’t listen to them when I write. Because I don’t listen to music to enhance the atmosphere of my writing time–I use it so I can tune things out.
I usually don’t listen to hip-hop when I write because snatches of lyrics will intrude in my brainspace. With most other types of music, I’m really bad at hearing the lyrics (my brain mostly registers them as sounds instead of words–dunno why), but I hear actual words in hip-hop songs, so they’re out.
I can’t listen to a new, fresh album when I write or else my brain will be exploring that album instead of the writing. So it has to be a well-traveled album. (And I like “album” as a unit of music much more than “playlist”.) When I find one, I stick to it for a good long while because when I hit play, my brain knows it’s time to work. And not look at Facebook or the other bane of my existence, ESPN.com.
For the past year, I’ve stayed steady with The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed and Beggar’s Banquet. When I hear the opening notes of “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Gimme Shelter” the old graymatter steadies and clears. And I can commence scribbling.
FADE OUT 
I may fall under the “freak” category when I’m actually writing, but lately for inspiration for my Baton Rouge based pilot I’ve been listening to BOOSIE. Say what you want about his music but it is undeniably authentic (as he currently resides in Angola). It’s an interesting contrast between the life I knew in LSU town versus everyday life in “the bottom”.