Hello,

Recently my custom music stopped working on my stereo.

It's not the files, since they were working fine, and in fact still work fine on my sim's portable music player. The music used to work on the regular stationary stereo, until it randomly stopped at some point (I did not notice exactly when). I tried selling and re-buying a stereo, I tried different ones, no use. Only the custom music doesn't work, the other channels are fine.

If this has been solved before I'm sorry, but every search I do brings me to people with the similar problem of their custom music not working at all, which generally ends up with them doing something with the files, which is non-applicable to my situation.

Any ideas?

Generally you need to ensure the files are in MP3 format, the bitrate is 128kbps (non variable), and the ID3 Tag is v1 (though I've not seen proof of this). There has been no definitive answer why they quit playing or for a work around when they do. Though typically, when they stop playing, the usual suggestion is to move them out of the folder and back in one at a time and test in your game, as one or more of them may have become corrupted and preventing any to play. If you're unable to do this, there really are no other alternative suggestions.

They're all Mp3, but varying bitrates, I'll look into getting them all to match those specifications then get back with the results, thanks!

Edit: as for moving them out of the folder, then back again. Can you do this while the game is running for the same effect? Or do you have to quit the game each time?

I downloaded iTunes and converted them all to 128bit rate and converted ID3 tags to version 1.0. It didn't really change anything though, so far as I can tell. I feel like it has something to do with the satellite speakers... I deleted all my stereo equipment and speakers after I got fed up, then bought just another stereo again after having played a few days. The songs worked on it just fine.

Thinking it had fixed itself I bought a better stereo and some satellite speakers.

It doesn't work again. -.-
-sell the satellite speakers
It works again ?:[

I tried upgrading the stereo to "wire hour with speakers", nothing changed. It's only when satellite speakers exist on the lot the custom music won't play.

Ah yes, it's an annoying bug: both the public wall-speakers that were added to the base game with a later patch and those that came with Showtime (?) refuse to play Custom Music. Shimrod101 has a mod for this here: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=370767
I also noticed that when there are wall-speakers on a lot the ITF DigiTunes channel plays Pop instead.