[3] According to Stephen Hill, co-founder of a radio show called Hearts of Space, the term is used to describe music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness.

[14] This type of psychonautic listening can produce a subtle trance-like state in certain individuals[15][16][17] which can in turn lead to sensations of flying, floating, cruising, gliding, or hovering.

"[28] Gerardo "Pkx" Martinez-Casas, original host, producer and creator of KUSF's 90.3 FM, University of San Francisco in California, "Moondance (The Beyond Within)" 1981– 198?, described space music as electronic, environmental and spiritual fine art fashion cosmic sounds as an aid and tool for cultural, contemplative, meditative, social and spiritual awareness.

Steve Sande, freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle considers space music to be "Anything but New Age," and writes that "spacemusic [is] also known as ambient, chill-out, mellow dub, down-tempo.

"[35] In the same article, he describes Stephen Hill's "Hearts of Space" spacemusic program as streaming ambient, electronic, world, new-age and classical music.

[5][10] Within that overview, Hill's definition of space music includes a wide variety of styles, instrumentation and influences – both acoustic or electronic.

[7][9] Many space music recording artists specialize in electronic forms, evolving out of the traditional Kosmische musik of the Berlin School (also known as Krautrock).

"[40] A number of Stockhausen's later compositions (not all of them electronic music) take outer space as their theme: Sternklang (Star Sound, 1971), Ylem (1972), Sirius (1975–77), several components of the opera-cycle Licht (Weltraum (Outer Space, 1991–92/1994), Michaelion (1997), Komet (Comet, 1994/1999), Lichter—Wasser (Lights—Waters, 1998–99)), and the so-called "Urantia" subcycle of Klang (Sound, 2006–2007), extending from its thirteenth "hour", Cosmic Pulses to its twenty-first "hour" Paradies.

[42] Physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler had been inspired by Homer Dudley's 1948 invention of the Vocoder and began in 1951 to work with a device known as a Melochord, in conjunction with magnetic tape recorders, leading to a decade of working at the Studio for Electronic Music (WDR) specializing in "elektronische Musik" using magnetic tape recorders, sine wave generators and serial composition techniques.

From the liner notes: "Ingenious use of echo, artificial reverberation and electronic alterations gives the music in this category a weird, spooky futuristic, 'out of this world' quality, well-suited to super-natural happenings of any kind.

Vaclav Nelhybel crafts a supernatural world, describing nebulae, meteors, star clusters and craters on Mars with sounds natural and manipulated to tell the story of cosmic space.

[53] In 1971–72, Sun Ra brought his "space music" philosophy to UC Berkeley where he taught as artist-in-residence for the school year, creating notoriety among the students by devoting the second half-hour of each class to solo or band performances.

[55] Other U.S.-based radio programmers adopted the term as well, among them, John Diliberto, Steve Pross, and Gino Wong with Star's End, launched in 1976, Frank J.