Using music to move the narrative along - linking or playlists?

[THBGato]

Creating playlists with music used in stories was widely done in certain fandoms a few years back. It's a lot less now for some reason, but if you look up stories from i.e. Supernatural fandom from maybe 15-20 years ago you'll find a lot of stories that use music to immerse the reader. It's wasn't only writers that liked that - again using Supernatural as an example, the use of music and playlists in the stories connected directly to the use of music in that show, the music was often an integral part of the storytelling in the show, so it came to be used in a similar way in the fanfic, as a tool to create reader immersion and enhance the narrative. And it was obvious that a lot of readers loved that.
This has dropped off a lot since then, I don't know why. Maybe it's a generational thing or just shifting preferences. There's a lot that has changed in fandom in the last 20 years obviously.

One of the things I like about Wattpad is that it allows the writer to embed youtube videos or other media at the top of each chapter. Thus you can (and I have) embed the soundtrack for each chapter at the top.

However. I see very few writers doing that on there. So maybe you're right that the youth of today (or, at least, the fandom writers of today) don't do it. Not even the myriad of Billie Eilish falls-for-a-fan writers on there.