Podcasts have always been about the voice—the hum of words, the intimacy of a confession, the quickfire wit of a banter. But anyone who has ever listened long enough knows that voice alone doesn’t carry the whole story. You need atmosphere or sound—something underneath. Without music, a podcast feels like a café stripped of chatter—drinks are poured, chairs are there, but the air remains sterile. With music, the room breathes. It shifts the atmosphere. Suddenly, you’re not just listening; you’re in it.
Epidemic Sound’s Stories & Interviews playlist is not about spectacle. It is more about textures than it is about anthems or pop hooks. Here you find sounds that hold memory, travel, laughter, silence. These tracks don’t just play behind the mic—they frame the mic. They transform words into living spaces: a Paris café glowing at night, a Stockholm tram in winter, a Berlin studio at 3 a.m. This playlist is storytelling’s secret architecture.
The Pull of Memory
There’s something about memory that always feels unfinished when Furthest I’ve Been from Home comes on. Mardal captures that incompleteness with delicate guitar strokes that sound less like playing and more like remembering. The notes linger, like photographs rediscovered years later. This is the sound of Lisbon mornings, tiles still wet from last night’s rain. Or the hush of a Polish library where old journals are being dusted off. The track turns memory into scene, and scene into feeling. Play this under a guest recalling childhood—the first time they heard their grandmother sing, the day they walked out of their old house for the last time. Suddenly, their story blooms in color. The music doesn’t overwhelm the voice; it wraps it.
The Moving Beat
Podcasts are not always static. Some stories are meant for motion: walking, riding, running. Alicante is kinetic, but not rushed. The rhythm sways like a train cutting through Spanish hillsides. The beat isn’t fast—it’s steady, patient, a companion to movement. This is the track for interviews about travel, migration, or journeys of growth. A migrant describing their first night on foreign soil. A writer narrating how cities changed the way they see themselves. The voice tells you the story, but the beat pulls you through the landscape. In a way, it mirrors Europe itself—borders shifting, people moving, identities constantly in transit. The music doesn’t just frame motion. It becomes motion.
Intimate Glow
Warmth is underrated in audio and Dahlbäck understands this. His You and Me on Cloud High drapes over a conversation like candlelight, not overpowering, just enough to tint everything with amber. Tailored for late-night chats in Amsterdam apartments, or two friends with mugs of tea, sharing stories that only surface when the world has gone quiet. When someone finally says, “This is hard for me to talk about,” the track cushions the fall. Intimacy in podcasts isn’t about what’s said, it’s about what’s allowed to be said. This is the sound of allowance—the glow that makes vulnerability possible.
Playful Sparks
Every playlist needs a little mischief and LeDorean’s Only U grins. It’s lo-fi and cheeky, the kind of sound that sneaks in a side-eye while you’re trying to be serious. It reminds listeners that storytelling isn’t always weighty—it can be joy, spontaneity, laughter bubbling in unexpected places. Play it under two co-hosts cracking up at their own jokes, or a segment where the conversation takes a ridiculous left turn when the episode has bounce. Like Barcelona at midnight with Neon signs flickering, alleyways buzzing, friends running late but not caring. This is energy that doesn’t demand attention, it invites it.
Quirky Chaos
Not everything should be neat. Some stories deserve edges, sudden turns, offbeat humor. Aiyo’s track is eccentric, off-center, delightful in its chaos. Ramaramaray belongs in experimental podcasts—artists in Berlin swapping wild sketches, friends in Dublin spinning stories that start as nonsense but end in revelation. Or a host admitting they forgot half their script and leaning into the mess. Chaos in conversation is not failure—it’s authenticity. This music knows how to hold that.
Hopeful Glow
This piece rises like sunlight through fog—gentle, not grand. The Light from Within doesn’t explode. It feels like beginnings, like possibility, like someone saying I made it through. It’s not triumph—it’s endurance. In interviews with an activist rebuilding their community, or a migrant reflecting on new roots in a foreign city, this music underlines resilience. Someone speaks of rebuilding, of rediscovering, of finding beauty again, and the notes rise alongside them. The glow is not in the music itself—it’s in the listener who feels it after the voice fades.
Ambient Stillness
Some stories need space. Binary Echoes & Auxjack’s REQUIEM offers it. Ambient layers stretch wide, holding silence as much as sound. It doesn’t push emotion—it allows it. Perfect for podcasts stepping into grief, mental health, or unspoken subjects. Heavy words land softer when the music holds them, like walls keeping the weight from collapsing in. Like a London fog evening, or Helsinki under first snow. this track doesn’t soothe the ache; it gives it room to breathe.
Lo-fi Charm
Bomull’s luv feels handwritten. Like journal pages inked with late-night honesty, or rainy Prague streets where every footstep feels like a secret. This suits diary-style podcasts: one host, a mic, no audience but you. This is music for diary-style podcasts, small-scale chats, confessions that sound like voice notes between friends. It’s not about grandeur. It’s about intimacy.
Why This Playlist Hits Different
Universally, music isn’t just sound—it’s culture stitched into daily rhythm. Italians don’t just sip espresso; they linger over conversations that stretch like melodies. The French don’t just walk their streets; they glide through them like verses. In Scandinavia, silence isn’t absence; it’s the space that gives sound its shape. That’s why this playlist works. It reflects that geography of feeling. From the playful chaos of Berlin studios to the calm patience of Swedish nights, each track frames a moment not just in sound, but in cultural atmosphere.
It doesn’t matter if you’re recording in a London flat, a Lisbon café, or a Helsinki library—the music lifts voices into places. It makes podcasts less like files and more like rooms you can walk into.
Final Note
Podcasts are about voices and voices tell stories. But music makes voices human. It gives them context, warmth, grounding. It transforms monologue into confession, conversation into atmosphere, silence into weight. Epidemic Sound’s Stories & Interviews is more than a playlist—it’s a cultural map. Each track builds a room around a voice, a scene around a story. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening in a cramped London flat, a Vienna train car, or a quiet Barcelona square—the music turns audio into experience.
Words tell us stories. Music lets us live them. There’s another story running alongside—the story of sound, holding everything together.