Hey everyone I'm new to the forums here and I'm looking for a little help!

I recently bought a used 2004 Mazda 3 hatch. The car is absolutely awesome and I couldn't be happier, but I have one major glitch. I had the car for a few weeks with absolutely no problems, and then one cold day out of nowhere the radio started freaking out. The station playing isn't staticy or have bad reception it seems, but the sound just sort of cuts in and out, almost like a cd skipping. Some days its completely fine and it doesn't happen once, and then another day it will be skipping/cutting out so bad that it is completely unbearable to listen to. I don't know if it's related at all, but the cd player also will work sometimes, though not most of the time, and will load a cd and play for a little bit, and then suddenly just stop playing and you can't even get it to respond or even eject or load a disc. I want to invest in a new auxiliary plug for it, but I also don't want to spend all that money and find that my deck has some sort of major problem.

Has anyone had this problem? Have any ideas for a DIY fix? Any help would be greatly appreciated!