I use a lot of the music from Final Fantasy in my playlist as well. When it's been a few sessions between combat encounters (happens easily - all of us older people are lucky to eke out 2 hrs a week) I go old school - nothing gets my players more into combat mode than the original combat music from Final Fantasy I. I also scatter a lot of other things in from all eras of fantasy CRPGs and various fantasy films. Small town? Lon Lon Ranch from Ocarina of Time followed by Concerning Hobbits (not really. My small town mix on Spotify set to random. Usually starting with Lon Lon). Exploring the wilderness? The Skyrim soundtrack has something fitting just about anything. I even have some music from the Star Wars soundtracks in my lists.

For general ambient music or background sounds I use either Syrinscape or Tabletop Audio (the latter has sounds available for Roll20). 

Try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlH6zD8wisg

NOTE: This music is not mine or produced by me. I give full credit to Really Slow Motion.

Here are some soundtracks I've pulled from I hadn't seen already mentioned:

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, The 13th Warrior, Starship Troopers, Dunkirk, Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner 2049, First Knight, Last of the Mohicans.

I use Spotify to arrange the tracks into playlists for general moods (e.g., Combat, Creepy, High Suspense).  Connected to a bluetooth speaker, it's pretty easy to just change to playing another playlist when the situation changes.

The only music I want near my games is 4:33 by John Cage.

Quote from Aescleal >>

The only music I want near my games is 4:33 by John Cage.

Soundscape is something fun I am working on, check it out, gives you background music, ambient noises and effects, there is a demo to try out too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQOUtEPwCH4&t=85s

I will play music in an indie game if it's really appropriate (like when doing an 80's tv show), but during D&D and other more tactical games or more complicated games it's too distracting in general.

It also depends on players- if you have a player who can't engage in the game because of the music (for whatever reason) then you shouldn't use it. Don't pull someone out of the fun for the sake of /maybe/ adding a little depth to someone else.

Quote from LethalKitten >>

It also depends on players- if you have a player who can't engage in the game because of the music (for whatever reason) then you shouldn't use it. Don't pull someone out of the fun for the sake of /maybe/ adding a little depth to someone else.

I'd happily been using Tabletop Audio for music and sound effects for a while with my group.  When they were finally about to get to Wave Echo Cave, I wanted to keep going with that and play some crashing wave sound every couple of minutes, but I didn't want to manage it manually while we were playing, because I'd either get out of my groove or I'd forget to do it entirely.  So I found a decent wave sound on Freesound.org and made a very basic html5-based tool to play it every so often. You can download it from here: https://github.com/mpirnat/waveecho and just pop the wave.html into your browser and away you go. I usually set it to play every 120 seconds or so and adjust the volume based on where the players are in the dungeon. My players got a kick out of it--maybe it will be useful for you too? :-)

I run an Elder Scrolls themed campaign, and I use, obviously, all of the Elder Scrolls sound tracks (minus the original 2) and all three of the Dragon Age game OST's, Shadow of the Collossus for boss battles (because epic), Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and also the sound track from Assassin's Creed 2, because it fits surprisingly well. Music in video games means a lot to me, and it means a lot to me when I'm running the campaign too. I have an iPod and a bluetooth speaker that I got almost exclusively for D&D and I'm always looking for new, cool stuff to add! I love picking just the right song to set the atmosphere.

Check out E.S. Posthumus for some tracks that can be great for a variety of scenes in a D&D session. They're instrumental (so no lyrics distraction if that's a thing for your group). I particularly like the "Unearthed" album. Some are high energy, chase-scene/battle-scene kind of music, and others are more mellow. 

Best list on this thread. 

I think one of my favourite things in DnD with my group is the look on players faces when I put on our 'end of game song', a lot of the time going from a rough fighting song from monster hunter or finalfantasy to a light upbeat song which brings a smile to their faces knowing we are going to talk loot, exp and the chance of levelling up!. We also used to include a vote for who was the best at rping each session which had its own music to it.

if you want to give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB0NWwjoyJE

I use https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUGy8GD5oY4EX9awX4FSqBw for background sounds depending on the environment we're in.
Playing some RPG game songs before and after the actual play session and during the break.

I sometimes commission artists to create songs for my games. Well worth the cost if you are like me and like some characters to have specific themes!

I love a well-placed musical choice when it's done with consideration to the emotions you want to evoke. I prefer my epic encounters to come from The Witcher, Banner Saga, and Game of Thrones to name a few.

The only thing that works for me, doesn't matter what system I play is music that is extremely ambient and monotone. Mostly concrete and diffuse ambient sounds, really. Music that has changes in mood, tempo and so on leads to timing issues like, suddenly something ridiculous happens and the music is pompous and dark. The mood of D&D can change a lot during a scene, a "lighthearted tavern brawl" can lead to something tragic happening, and so on. Then you have to combine DMing with D&Ding for it to work...

The problem of music being distracting is evident in D&D streams before they figure out (?) you have to have an audio compressor on the music track that is side-chained to the track(s) with the DM and players on it. Its almost the same (but not as bad) when you play a home game. And then, you can't have an audio compressor; you have to speak louder or lower the volume until you can't really hear the music.

The only time music worked well was when we played Mage: the Ascension and had the Black Box by Klinik on all the time. But that wouldn't work so well with D&D since its far to dark for this fame.      

I have a big playlist I use. I really like musicians who have atmospheric, sometimes repetitive scores. Check out Philip Glass (Mishima, the Hours), Vangelis, Gàbor Szabó, Taiko drumming music, Simeon ten Holt... there are a lot of cool options out there!

I haven't dug too deep into film scores and videogame soundtracks. Obviously, it differs from gm to gm and group to group but here's some of what I've been using.

Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals -- The Transcendence Orchestra. Great kinda ambient, kinda drone-y stuff that really helps to build a sense of anticipation, mystic  vibes, and in some instances, deep foreboding.

Smote Reverser -- Thee Oh Sees: have been a fan of theirs for years but lately groupleader John Dwyer has been mining his background in D&D and making really good prog stuff--and I'm not usually a progrock guy. They just came out with a new album called Face Stabber that I will for sure use in coming sessions as well. It's best to pick certain tracks for certain situations. Also check some tracks off their album Mutilator Defeated at Last. 

I've also been using stuff from Brian Eno, Have a Nice Life, Bauhaus, Neu!, Total Control, Ganglians (esp "Valiant Brave").

Thanks for the Ambient Realms info...much appreciated.  Now you're the helpful poster!