That's part of the reason why I never put radios in bedrooms and also a reason why I keep game music turned on. The game doesn't seem to do a scan of the room to check if other Sims are sleeping so the AI is like let's turn it on because we're addicted to Salsa. Speaking of that, why is it always salsa that gets turned on first? It works for Don Lothario, but everyone else... ewwww.


This was the thing that I was trying to improve with BaST actually. Like you, I find the default radios less than ideal and it's because of a few simple problems. The lack of a playlist feature and a skip feature for mode music. There is also the fact than whenever you select a song in the music options menu to play it'll stop when you exit that menu. Unfortunately BaST is causing CTDs and problems atm so I can't publically release it but I do love the fixes I introduced.

I've tried to listen to music and play the game at the same time. I figured i'd try again, but I can't. I can't concentrate on the game AND listen to music at the same time and honestly don't know how anyone can, my brain gets overloaded. I feel like y'all must have super brains lol. So, just game sounds for me.

For me I have to listen to the music because I can't be as creative without it.

Is salsa particularly good for doing the smustle to? The smustle is the quintessential Sims dance.

No, the Salsa has nothing to do with the Smustle. The Smustle is from the Nightlife expansion pack for Sims 2 (and is based of Michael Jackson's dance form the Thriller music video)
Salsa being the default radio station when Sims turn on the radio, meanwhile, comes from all the way back to the basegame of Sims 1.

I once read it's because the base-game of TS1 has several 1950s(60s?) suburban influences, and Salsa was just a popular music genre among 1950s (60s?) suburbanites.

TS1 doesn't have salsa music. I would know since I made this. What you're thinking of is the Latin station.

Lately, because of a nightcore version of Cost of the Crown, I've discovered Mercedes Lackey, and then because of yt's helpful recommendations, Blackmore's Night, Loreena McKennit, Karliene, and Celtic Woman. The genre I'd classify as... fauxmedieval fantasy? Grizzly fairytale spooky and whimsical.
Speaking of nightcore, if anyone has recommendations, I'd love them, because well editted songs are few and far between. Most Nightcore sound like Alvin and the Chipmunk covers haha. Like, I just want it slightly higher so that my tinny phone can play it back more easily, why to the stratosphere?

If I'm not listening to the game music, which half the time I am (Pop & College Rock stations), then I'll be listening to either RED, Breaking Benjamin, Skillet, Within Temptation or Blackbriar. Sometimes I listen to pop, but not a lot of it because most of it is cringey to me. Singing and rocking out whilst playing is super fun, kinda relieves the stress from households with 4 toddlers etc. :P

I don't play Sims 2 on a regular basis anymore, but when I did (from 2013 to 2015) I put a lot of songs ingame through the custom radio, the genres I listened the most were classic rock (I'm tempted to call it boomer rock), metal, new wave and synthpop.

These are some selected songs that I remember the best (if you'll notice some of them actually came from certain game that came around the time Sims 2 was released)

Metallica - Hit the Lights
Faith No More - Chinese Arithmetic
Alice Cooper - I'm Eighteen
Ozzy Osbourne - Bark at the Moon
Deep Purple - Highway Star
Iron Butterfly - Easy Rider
Exodus - Bonded By Blood
Pantera - Strenght Beyond Strenght
Rolling Stones - Paint It Black
Aerosmith - Make It
Quiet Riot - Cum On Feel The Noize
The Who - Won't Be Fooled Again
Queen - Don't Stop Me Now
AC/DC - Highway to Hell
Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower
Led Zeppelin - Kashmir
Jethro Tull - Thick As a Brick (yep, that 40 minute song)
The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
Judas Priest - Electric Eye
Black Sabbath - The Shining
Alcatrazz - God Blessed Video
A Flock of Seagulls - I Ran
Faith No Man - Quiet In Heaven
Blondie - Atomic
The Buggles - I'm a Camera
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
Robert Plant - Burning Down One Side
Kraftwerk - The Robots
INXS - Original Sin
Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
Foreigner - Waiting for a Girl Like You
Ultravox - Vienna

And these are the ones I can remember, my playlist usually had more than one song per artist/band.

Yeah was thinking of the Latin station. Same principle though, since Salsa is a type of Latin music and the station in Sims 2 was a follow up to the Latin station in TS1

Recently I found these songs by an artist known as "X-ZEZZ" and they've been a big part of my creation process.

Sad but Not Sad
Soft Rock
Acoustic Rock
Neo Rock
Pop Rock Vibe
Rock-Rap

Okay, so it depends, I usually listen to something random like pop or chill music (chill like Lana Del Rey, The Marias, The Neighbourhood or something), whatever I feel like listening. However, I noticed whenever I make vampire Sims, play them on live mode or build a gothic/grungy house I listen to goth, metal and rock and it fits PERFECTLY lmao. My sims look more bad ass, do worse things and I feel like they're in those cringy Sims movies on YouTube but without the cringe factor.

Now when I think about it, whenever I build on large lots I kinda use the opportunity to listen an entire album and whenever I listen to those songs when doing something else I always think of my xy house I was building.

The first two pics are my normal mood.
The last two pics are a bit edgier mood but not quite dark.

Just wanted to say your taste is immaculate.

70's and 80's music all the way for me. I made a neighborhood where I imported 80's music in game just for that neighborhood alone.

The sound of silence. Not the song, just the actual sound of silence (and whichever other sounds are around at the time).
I'll very occasionally put on some music, but these days I can't handle having music playing in the background for very long without my brain deciding enough is enough after about half a playlist (a very short one), and I can't concentrate all that well with songs, because I start humming to it and lose my focus on whatever else I'm doing.

I tend to prefer Youtube videos with people talking (usually not anything brainy, just something fun to listen to) instead of music these days, but silence when I'm playing games.

I stock all the various channels with selected MP3 rips and then try to figure out what channel works best for each household. It gives each family it's own musical character AND I get to hear a wide selection of genres during play. Every now and then I curate these collections. I'm careful though: a corrupted MP3 file will crash the lot, and it's frustrating tracking down the perp, so I try not to overdue it.

Anyway, my elf families (I always have elves) always listen to the Grateful Dead. I should probably add a few more Darkstars come to think of it, next time I play.

if you have or download some MP3 or WAV files you can put those into the game and put custom music into the sims 2 radio's you just need to know that the audio file is in MP3 format and place into the My Documents EA Games The Sims 2 music folder

If I'm not mistaken, I think "Salsa" is the default station because it's the music that plays in Don Lothario's house when you play for the first time and that's how it stayed. That music suits Don Lothario.

I have Costum Music in my Game... for Build and Buy mode I have an OST from an anime cause normal music would get so annoying and for CAS I use random songs I'm listening to right now... but often I just listen to music via my phone instead cause I noticed that I get much slower bored from playing if I'm listening musik to it and the music quality of my phone is much better... I usually play like 30 minutes - 1 Hour and that day I listened to music I played 4 hours through and after a break 3 hours more... and the same the next day (Was a weekend but even on weekends I can't play that much and mostly not more then 1 hour!) I guess cause I put the Game more in the background... I just work then XD

My YouTube favorites list I've carefully, ahem, curated ever since I was a tween exactly for the purpose of playing TS2. Listening to anything else feels wrong and I refuse to delete any songs off of it, for nostalgias sake. If it means I'll have to listen to Sweet Little Bumble Bee, More Than Just a Fantasy, Dubi Dubi Doo La La, Dubi Dubi Doo La La as my familys' atriarchs go through a divorce after Erin found Aaron in bed with Eren, then so be it.

I always play with the game audio on, but I've added quite a bit of custom music to the different radio stations. There are some songs I pretty much only hear when I play the game as I added the music first when I was 15-16 and then some when I was 21 or so, but most if it holds up, there's a lot of punk and some video game music (including one custom station that only plays a jazzy video game track for whatever reason), and a lot of 60s' and 70s' pop which I find suits very well.
On a semi-related note I think I'll need to make myself a playlist for playing The Sims Medieval though since I permanently removed all audio from the computer I use to play that when I tried to fix some sound issues.

When I build in the game I like finding lo-fi synth music in-theme so for example when I was remodeling all of Takemizu I put on some chill East-Asian-inspired music, and when I did a remodel of three lakes it was very folksy music like the Lumineers and Mumford and Sons. While I am playing though I tend to just keep the original sound on and no music.

I don't often listen to music when I play, but I do play youtube videos on the background A LOT while I play. My go-to's are ask reddit videos, true crime videos (particularly the Casual Criminalist or something like Mr. Ballen), and just in general longform content where I get to listen to people talk about interesting topics while I watch my sims live their lives. Sometimes, I'll even pull up a sims 2 stream or gameplay video just to spice things up and feel like I'm playing /with/ someone haha.

Maybe it's strange to say, but I don't play with the game's sound on at all. Back when I played Sims 1 I had speakers that played the sound out loud, and after they broke I just never got around to replacing them and I found I didn't really miss the noise. A lot of times I listen to random Youtube videos, old reruns of TV shows, or just playing in total silence. Since I usually have to roll for spreadsheets, I need to concentrate and keep numbers in my head.

Default TS2 music + downloaded TS1,TS3 and TS4 in-game music