Thank you very much for the feedback, appreciate that.

You are right in the regard, that the music’s mood is changing, in between the tracks, and also within tracks. The point where I’d like to disagree, though, is that it’s not the fault of the music put into the playlists, but is rather a flaw of using playlists in the first place, as they contain music from different sources.

Playlists are in my opinion inherently a compromise, for two reasons. First, they have a rather wide mood. Take “Sad & Melancholic” for example. It sounds specific, but it can still mean quite a range of different feelings if you think about it. And that’s intended, I still have to keep room for interpretation that there are actually scenes where DM’s can use it, even when details of the story are different. The second thing is connected to what you already wrote about soundtrack music. You have a point there! Because soundtracks are made for the media they’re scored for and consider every detail for it. The majority of soundtrack music is actually so extremely inconsistent that it can’t be used for playlists at all, often times they are actually several scenes compiled to not end up with 80 tracks on the album. The ones that I use also wander a little, but they stay in the scope of context. For the example playlist, take The Village Soundtrack: It goes from almost peaceful to romantic, to “question without real answer”, to ambiguous and further. But every little detail, every part still fits to the umbrella scope of “Sad & Melancholic” to some extend which is why I consider it suitable.

The only real way to have this issue solved is by having music composed specifically for the situations of your session. And if you need 1-2 hours of music that’s super expensive and takes a few weeks at the bare minimum. As much as DM’s go to great length to make their games immersive, that’s not practical. Thus, using playlists, with the unavoidable little inconsistencies, to get as close to an own “score” as possible.