At this year's Congress in Dubrovnik the new rules were introduced, but there has been controversy since then.

Immediately after the Congress in June, experts pointed out "multiple operational and technical problems" related to the new rules.

These problems included a lack of "a uniform medium of delivery", as it would not allow skaters to use the same music file or medium for all competitions.

It was also claimed that there would be no easy way of storing and sorting the music of the skaters at events, and that it would be time consuming at registration. 

The new rules would also eliminate an independent back-up system which plays the skaters' original music without any involvement of a third party, directly from the original CD.

Competitors as well as their countries have to certify that their music has been fully cleared and authorised for public use and television coverage.

Up to now, all competitors had to hand their music CDs over at the accreditation phase before they got them back after the competition.

The aim of this is to ensure, to a reasonable degree, that their music was used exclusively for the competition and media coverage of it, with it feared that the new rule would "create a multitude of risks of abuse".

"There needs to be a clear rule which is the same for all international competitions (possible file format and delivery medium) and a system which is usable in an easy way on all level of events; there should be one unique and clear defined original music medium for each skater at the competition, and this would be the simple CD," an ISU statement said.

"Taking into consideration all above mentioned reasons showing that the application of the new Rule343/823 would bring about insurmountable problems and unreasonable risks, the Council has decided to suspend the new rules and replace them by the old ones which would still allow CDs and CD players at competitions."