This is not a game issue but rather a serious Proton bug report. I have successfully recreated this issue across multiple devices across Distros(Debian, and Fedora based, as well as Arch), and system specifications are irrelevant in this case, so I have excluded them.

After a recent update, Proton now crashes when using Grand Theft Auto V’s Self Radio feature. This happens in both the Enhanced Edition and Legacy Edition. I believe this issue is related to MP3 handling and WMP (Windows Media Player's API).

Before: Proton 9.0-4 (Older Version, Working)

On Proton 9.0-4, Self Radio works correctly in GTA 5 Legacy Edition.

• Note: This version of Proton is too old to support DX12, which is required for the Enhanced Edition. However, since the radio system is identical in both versions, it is likely that it would have worked in the Enhanced Edition as well.

In Proton 9.0-4, the game successfully detects music and adds it to the Self Radio channel.

To monitor GTA 5’s interaction with the User Music folder, I used inotifywait, which tracks when a program accesses, writes, or reads files in a specified directory. You can see it in the terminal on the videos I attached

✅ GTA successfully scans and accesses the MP3 files adding it to self radio.,

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1d5a3e0-d852-42f0-999e-e380454cfe15

Steam Log (Not Very Useful, But Included)

Latest Proton Versions (Experimental, Bleeding Edge, Hotfix) – BROKEN

On Proton Experimental, Proton Bleeding Edge, and Proton Hotfix, the game instantly crashes when attempting a full scan for music.

However, when I replace all MP3s with WAV files, the game does not crash but still fails to detect any music (even though GTA 5 supports WAV files, and they worked in Proton 9.0-4).

Before presenting the crash log and video, here are some notes I would like to give:

• The issue affects both Legacy and Enhanced versions of GTA 5 in exactly the same way.
• Both versions crash instantly and interact with files in the same order, as confirmed by inotifywait.
• Proton-GE behaves differently:
  • It does not crash.
  • The game scans all the files one by one (not as extensively as in Proton 9.0-4, but more than in Experimental).
  • After scanning, GTA reports that it found no songs.

❌Game crash when scanning.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d7266350-1eef-4015-848c-bf0ef8ce9999

Crash Log (Proton Experimental)

Conclusion

This does not appear to be a GTA 5 issue. Instead, it seems to be a Serious Proton Issue/Bug

Since older Proton versions work, but the newer versions of proton crash or fail to detect songs, this suggests that a recent change in Proton is causing issues.

Because i believe this is a issue with WMA/codecs I believe this issue can affect other games.