How do you put your own music into the game?

[Hegelian]

If it doesn't slow it down I might just use witch's tutorial to give buy, build, cas and neighbourhood the same soundtrack.

If you stay in any of these places long enough the music cycles to the next category anyway, once it plays through the first (at least since Nightlife). 

Well I have put about 50 songs, some of them up to 7 minutes long and I haven't noticed any difference in the loading time of the game.

Heg, the file format was WMA but they didn't work in the game at all. I used to be able to change the file format (and still do on my old computer) from WMA to .mp3 in XP to upload songs to my mp3 player. It works just fine, so it is slightly disconcerting to hear it shouldn't

I'm guessing the files are being converted on-the-fly while being transferred.   

Also, some portable music devices can play native WMA files.

[Arina]

Ooh... so, if I just fill one of those 4 folders and empty the others, it will use that for all 4? That would be even better!

[Emma]

I just checked and they are being uploaded as .mp3's. Doh. Sorry

[Khan of Wyrms]

I have always wondered how the game handled the different tracks and the syncing of them for different instruments.  I wonder if they use a proprietary scheme or a common one, like midi.

I don't have an actual answer, but...<a lot of words!>

Good non-actual answer.  It definitely gives me the message that the process is more convoluted than I would want to tackle.  They couldn't have just used a software sequencer to track the parts and applied a 'humanizer' effect algorithm to make the parts sound bad for unskilled players?  No, that would make too much sense for EA.  Alas.