I miss it too though I'm getting used to the new soundtrack now given how much I've been playing.
I really wish there was an option to switch between soundtracks or at least have the ability to play them on the stereo.
There's a website that lets you listen to the hourly music from all 4 games live in the correct hour: https://tane.us/ac/nh.html (use the links at the bottom to change the game)
Honestly NL had some pretty tropical sounding hourly musics just because of the steel drums in some of the songs (e.g. 8AM, 12PM, 7PM). I don't understand why NH doesn't have steel drums if we're on an island but NL does but ok.
I would swap out ACNL/ACWW music if I could but for now I just play at the hours I like the music of so I can hear the ingame ambience without getting too annoyed.
No. It's not weird. Honestly, I do similar things sometimes for video games that have bad or forgettable music. I put a bunch of rock music on my Xbox 360 when I played Fallout 3 and then turned the in-game music all the way down, but kept the voice acting and sound effects up. It was great! (The 40s-50s era music on the radio from Fallout 3 was good, but they didn't have enough of it so it got repetitive after a while. The actual game music was practically non-existent.)
I personally find AC's music (the whole series) quite forgettable. If the game had sliders to let me turn the music down all the way but still hear the sound effects, I would listen to something else. I like hearing the sound effects for fishing and for the balloons. But since AC doesn't have that, I just listen to the NH music.
I find the hourly music in New Horizons overall okay but doesn't do it for me like the past game's. I've listened to the first game's hourly music as well as Wild World's a few times but the downside is not being able to hear the sound effects in the actual game. Especially the balloons. Just can't risk the possible 20,000 bells. I really wish they'd give us a music mod or something in a future update...
I wish this was an unlock able feature for new horizons. But no. I’m playing new leaf right this second just for the music. And for the fact that Mallary and Bill barge into my home.