I remember that some time ago there was the intention to add or replace the actual music in Pioneer. There was always the issue about the license, which should be enough permissive.
Today, listening to the SceneSat Radio stream (https://scenesat.com/) I found an artist which music IMHO could fit very well in Pioneer. He publish his music under the name "Curious Inversions" (good name for a Culture ship! :D), but his real name is Jeremy Rice.
His four albums are freely downloadable here: http://www.kahvi.org/artists2.php?artis ... Inversions (see pages 1-4).
A good thing is that he publish all of his music under CC-BY licence (see: https://www.last.fm/music/Curious+Inversions/+wiki ) and what I read about his attitude is very encouraging: "Curious Inversions' releases are all available for free download at various venues across the internet, and are always released with the least restrictive licensing available (usually Creative Commons Attribution). Mixes, alterations, and derivations of Curious Inversions' music are not only allowed, but strongly encouraged by the artist."
He had a blog (https://curiousinversions.blogspot.it/) but it's no longer updated. Instead, he could be contacted through his FB page: https://www.facebook.com/curiousinversions
On Kahvi I found another very good artist that could fit well: http://www.kahvi.org/artist_info.php?nickname=Alkor
His four albums: http://www.kahvi.org/artists2.php?artist=Alkor
However, I don't know anything about his licensing.
Music inspiration
Re: Music inspiration
Soundtrack to the sci-fi show Wolf 359 (from which we took the lore for the system with the same name in pioneer, since we/pioneer-dev team are fans of the show):
https://wolf359radio.bandcamp.com/album ... rack-vol-1
https://wolf359radio.bandcamp.com/album ... rack-vol-1