I don't know why, but the in-game music doesn't seem to work on newer operating systems, has always worked when I used to play this game on a win98 platform but hasn't worked for me on xp or win7. Can anybody help? Or is this just a known common bug that cannot be fixed because the game isn't the same without it

For me its not working, and im using XP. So i guess you jsut got a correct reason.
I also prefer to play without music, because gaming gets more spooky then.

Well... I guess this question has been put up before (just in case you wanted to know it).

Also, if I remember well, you can fix it by going to the menu [Esc] ==> Options ==> enable "CD Music". If this still doesn't work (and it sometimes happens), just reverse the "sound compatibility" mode and try again.

Let me know if it helped you .

In-game music still isn't working, does it matter if i'm playing without disk as the in-game music runs off CD? And my quake is a torrented version :s don't know if that does anything to it.

Oh well, too bad then.

Whenever I had such problems, I was mostly chaotically swapping the sound settings (effects volume, CD music, sound quality, sound compatibility) until it would work.

Also, I don't think that by "CD music" Quake refers to some disk with music. I guess it's just "Outside of Quake 2 music/stuff".