AMC provides a period-appropriate playlist via Spotify for each week's episode.
- In general, each character's playlist on AMC's Halt and Catch Fire Spotify account is absurdly awesome, highlighting each character's personality. Cases in point: Joe's slick synthpop and new wave collection, and Cameron's jagged girl punk mix.
- In "I/O":
- When Donna comes home from work, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lodi" plays in the background. Lyrically, it represents Gordon's present attitude and situation, being stuck in a dead end job after a high profile failure.
- XTC's "Complicated Game" plays as Gordon and Joe contemplate reverse engineering the IBM PC. The former wonders if he should risk his career and family for a second chance at greatness while tinkering with his daughters' Speak & Spell, and the latter distracts himself by smashing up his apartment by constantly hitting a baseball with his prized bat because he didn't get the answer he wanted right away.
- In "FUD", Gordon plays Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle" on the radio while driving home from work. Gordon plays the upbeat song to match his upbeat mood due to his promotion from a lowly sales engineer to lead hardware engineer of the new Cardiff PC project.
- In "High Plains Hardware", Cameron wanders the empty Cardiff offices while listening to X-Ray Spex's "Germ Free Adolescents", which seems appropriately spacey for someone who acts like a visitor from another planet.
- The opening sequence in "Adventure" observes Joe struggling to get ready in the morning a week after getting the shit beaten out of him, set to Big Black Delta's "Capsize"
. - In "Up Helly Aa":
- Berlin's "Sex" plays as Joe brings in booth babes during Cardiff Electric's suite party to distract the drunken guests from the fact that the Giant was malfunctioning.
- From the Giant's Spotify Playlist, released prior to "Up Helly Aa"'s premiere, The Jo Boxers' "Just Got Lucky" is an appropriate music choice, considering the Cardiff Electric team were lucky to survive COMDEX after a series of misfortunes, first by having their reservations cancelled, then the Giant malfunctioning just before the suite party, and lastly facing the threat of being edged out by an inferior copycat.
- In "1984", Suuns' "2020" plays as Joe demonstrates how sociopathic he is as he torches the first shipment of Giants.
- In the opening scene of "SETI", the Icicle Works' "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)" plays as Donna walks through the Mutiny house, showing how chaotic a typical "work" day is.
- As Gordon leads the coders to victory in laser tag, Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon" plays, highlighting the fact that Gordon is taking this game way too seriously.
- In the first part of the Grand Finale, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" suddenly fires up as Bos exits the hospital after receiving a clean bill of health from his doctor, perfectly underscoring the sudden return of Bos' confidence after a season of worrying and self-doubt.
- Ryan's first journey into working with Joe features David Bowie's "Absolute Beginners" at Joe's decadent party in ""Flipping the Switch," foreshadowing the passion each will have for their project.
- Dire Straits' "So Far Away" is used perfectly in Season 4's "Goodwill" to reflect the sadness every character has while boxing up what used to be Gordon's life, and reflecting the emptiness of losing him that all of them are feeling. Donna even lampshades it when handing the album to Cameron by saying, "This is perfect."
