Music

World music lets you score a story with music you upload: a theme that plays when a journey opens, a track for each place, and story beats that crossfade to a battle theme or fade into silence when the scene turns. Players hear it in a music player that follows the story, in the reading view and in visual novel mode, with a soundtrack screen where they browse the world's tracks.

Music is display-only. The storyteller never reads your albums, track titles or moods, so it changes nothing about the prose. It is atmosphere over a story that has to work without it.

The music library

Your music lives outside any single world, in a library of albums. Open it from Music library in the profile menu or from the creator portal. An album is a set of tracks you upload once and can link to any of your worlds: a soundtrack, a playlist, or a set of ambiences. A library holds up to 50 albums and about 25 hours of audio.

Albums

New album asks for a Title, an Artist (shown to players in the player), an optional Description and an optional Credit link (the artist's page, a store, or the license), all editable later with Edit details.

The cover is the square players see. Click the cover slot or drop an image on it. A picture that is not square is shown whole on a blurred copy of itself, or pick a square crop with Adjust the square (Whole picture or Square crop, then size and drag the square). Without a cover, the first track with embedded artwork supplies one.

Page look dresses the album's page and its soundtrack screen: a landscape Banner shown edge to edge behind the album (without one, the cover is blown up and blurred), an Accent color and a dark Page background, with one-click looks. A background too light to read on is refused.

An album that a world links cannot be deleted: the dialog lists those worlds, so unlink it in each editor first. Deleting an album or a track removes it from every world that cued it, but journeys already under way keep hearing it.

Uploading tracks

The upload zone on an album's page takes audio files, as many as you like at once: MP3, OGG, OGA, OPUS, WAV, FLAC, M4A, AAC or WEBM, up to 80 MB and 20 minutes per track. A file over either limit is refused with its length, never trimmed. An album holds up to 60 tracks.

Before anything uploads, tick I own this music, or have the rights to use it on Imagina. That confirmation is recorded with each track, and the zone stays off until it is ticked. Read the music policy first: it covers your own, commissioned and licensed music, which AI-generated music is allowed, and what never is.

Files upload one at a time, then show Processing while Imagina converts them for streaming, measures their loudness so every track plays at the same level, and draws the waveform. Title and artist come from the file's tags, otherwise from the file name with a leading track number stripped ("03 - Night Market.flac" becomes "Night Market"). A file that cannot be read shows Failed with the reason.

Uploading a .zip

You can also drop or browse a .zip of tracks. It is unpacked in your browser, nothing uploads until you confirm, and a preview shows what will happen first:

• The tracks, in the order they will upload, with their sizes. The order is the file names' order, so number your files (01, 02, 03...) to set the album order: the numbers are dropped from the titles, and you can reorder later.
• The cover, when the zip has an image. One named cover, folder, front, album or artwork is preferred, otherwise the first image found. It is only used if the album has no cover yet, and the preview says so either way.
• What was left out: audio files over 80 MB are named, tracks beyond what the album has room for are struck through, and tracks beyond the 60 an album holds are counted.

Confirm with Upload N tracks, or Cancel to change nothing. The tracks then upload one at a time, exactly like dropped files. Hidden files and the folders macOS adds to archives are ignored, the rights checkbox applies to a zip as to loose files, and a zip that cannot be read is reported so you can unzip it and drop the tracks instead.

Track details

Each track row has a waveform preview, an inline rename, a Mood picker, a loop switch and a menu. Drag the handle to reorder (Move up and Move down on phones): the first track of the first album is the world's theme unless you pick another in the editor. Edit details (or a double click) opens the full form:

• Title, and an Artist only when it differs from the album's.
• Credit: a license or source line shown with the track in the soundtrack, such as "CC BY 4.0, from the artist's Bandcamp".
• Moods: up to four of calm, warm, romantic, playful, mysterious, tense, dark, sad, epic, battle, triumphant and eerie. They help you find the right track when you score a scene; the storyteller never sees them.
• Loop: on by default, the track repeats as background music. Off, it plays once, then the music goes quiet until the next cue.
• Replace audio: a new file, with the same rights confirmation. The track keeps its identity, so every world and beat that cues it plays the new file. Journeys already open keep the old one until they reload.

Music in the world editor

Open Images & display → Music to link albums, pick the theme, lock tracks and see where the music plays.

Linking albums and the theme

Link an album lists the albums of your library this world does not link yet. A world links up to 8 albums, ordered with the arrows (the first is first in the player), and Unlink removes one from the world without touching your library. A world copied from another keeps the albums it inherited, even if they are not yours, but once unlinked they cannot be linked again.

Theme plays when a journey opens and wherever the story has not cued anything else. Left empty, it is the first track of the first album. A world that cues nothing else is a plain album player: the theme plays throughout and players pick tracks as they like.

Where the music plays sums up every cue: the theme, each place with music and the sub-places that inherit it, and every beat that plays or stops a track, including cues on an answer or a dice roll. A cue pointing at a track no longer on a linked album is flagged here and linked to its entry.

Music for places

Each location under World & lore → Locations has a Music (optional) field. Arriving at the place crossfades to its track; places within a top-level location inherit its music unless they have their own; leaving a place with music for one without any returns to the theme. The picker groups tracks by album with covers and moods, searches by title, album or mood, and previews a track on the spot. See Locations.

Music cues in beats

Two effects sit in the beat effect list's Music group, and are also offered under When the player answers and on a forced roll's outcomes:

• Play music: pick a Track, set the Crossfade (0 to 15 seconds, 3 by default; 0 is a hard cut) and optionally Play once (fanfare). The track keeps playing until the scene moves to another place or another cue changes it. With Play once, it plays a single time, like a victory fanfare or a stinger, then the music goes back to the place's track or the theme.
• Stop music: the music fades out over the Fade out you set, and the story stays silent until the next cue or a place with its own music.

Cues land as the new turn opens, a cue to the track already playing does nothing, and on a turn where both happen, a beat cue wins over place music. See Effects you can apply.

The soundtrack and locked tracks

Players can open every track of the world in the soundtrack. The Soundtrack list in the Music section lets you lock a track to keep it secret: it shows as "???" and cannot be played until the player has heard it in a story on this world. Unlocks stay on the player's account, across every journey of the world. Lock all and Unlock all do it in one click. A locked track that nothing in the story plays gets a Never heard warning, because no player could ever unlock it.

What players hear

Music never starts on its own. When a journey with music opens, a toast says the world has music, and nothing plays until the player presses play, in the toast or in the Music button of the journey tools. From then on the story drives the player: a new place or a beat crossfades the music, and a "now playing" toast names the change.

The floating music window shows the cover, a waveform to seek in, play, previous and next, a volume slider, a Follow the story switch (on by default) and the albums' track lists. A player who picks a track by hand hears it until the story's next cue; with the switch off their pick stays. The window shrinks to a mini player, the device's lock screen and media keys control it like any music app, and the music is turned down while a turn is read aloud.

The Soundtrack screen, opened from the music window or the visual novel menu, presents the albums with their banner and look, the credits link, every track with its artist and credit line, the locked ones as "???", and how many tracks have been heard. In visual novel mode, a nameplate fades in when the story changes the track, and the menu holds the volume, the follow switch and the soundtrack.

On iPhones and iPads the volume is the device's own, so the slider is hidden and a crossfade becomes a cut. In multiplayer, every member hears the cues on their own device, with nothing synchronized.

The SoundCloud link

A world can still carry a SoundCloud link (a track or playlist) at the bottom of the Music section. A world that links no album plays it from a Soundtrack button in play, as before, and until you set one, the first SoundCloud link in your introduction or description is used. As soon as a world links an album, the SoundCloud link is not used: players hear your albums instead, with the crossfades, cues, loops and soundtrack screen an embedded player cannot give. The field is marked legacy.

Best practices

• Rights first. Upload only what you own or are licensed to use, and put the license or source in the credit line when a license asks for attribution. Covers and titles are shown to the players of every world that links the album, so the content policy applies to them too.
• Number your files. 01, 02, 03 in the names gives a zip the right order and clean titles.
• A theme and a few places go a long way. One main theme, a track for the places that matter, a Play music cue on the climax. Not every place needs its own music.
• Loop background music, play stingers once. Keep the loop on for ambiences and themes; use Play once in the beat for a fanfare.
• Lock for discovery, not by default. Lock the tracks that spoil a reveal, and make sure each one is cued somewhere.
• Keep your originals. Imagina stores converted versions for playback, not an archive of your files.

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Frequently asked questions