A feature I loved about The Sims 2 was how easy it was to customize music for the various modes -- buy, build, neighborhood, etc.
As far as I can tell, The Sims 3 only lets you add music to the custom music folder -- no customization for various modes :-(
Does anyone know if it is possible to somehow include custom music per mode?
Currently there is not a sure-fire way to do it, no. The only way that it could be done is to use Sims 3 Package Extractor (s3pe) to replace the current build music in the FullBuild1.package file. If this was all you had to do it'd be easy. However in The Sims 3, EA thought it'd be a grand idea to package the music in it's own proprietary format ".snr/.sns". This is also known as the EA Layer 3 audio format. They also used this format in Command and Conquer 3. To get something encoded in this format is the problem. There are no known converters that will encode into it. I myself, have gotten ffmpeg to convert out of this format into mp3 for some files, but not the other way around. I did not put more effort into it after that and moved on to more enticing projects.
This is something I've missed when playing Sims3 instead of Sims2. Since you can only put your own music in the Custom Music folder, I find it a better solution to just disable the music in the game altogether and play music outside the game instead with iTunes or whatever. Not an ideal solution, but at least you get to hear your own music all the time and not the annoying Sims music. Also, you don't have the irritation of your music fading as you move from room to room, or having your sim turn the stereo off half way through your favourite song!
There is a way just dosent work I did it and my games sound went crazy and had to take it out you have to add a mod along with a new folder named music for build/buy/live but it messes up all the sounds like if your sims are flirting they sound and look like their fighting so I wouldn't do it if I were you but do it if you please
