No more radios in cars?

I see an expanding market for "dash-topper" accessories that add carplay & analog radio, among other features.

My local market has no radio worth listening to, and it's been over 20 years since I've gained a benefit from traffic advisories hosted on low power roadside transmitters.

I'm on the fence about satellite radio- every now and then I get a rental car that has an active subscription and I've found one channel I like- but I haven't found a subscription plan that gives anything close to a good price for one channel's worth of consumption.

I'd love to see the next level up- something that covers the stock touchscreen. The outer, driver-facing side could have physical switches for the driver to manipulate, the inside would have mechanical "fingers" to tap the correct areas in the correct sequences to repeat the desired control inputs into the touchscreen. Could even still include a video display for the rear vision system.

We can dream...

 

On long drives out here on West coast I go thru both AM and FM non-stop and my favorite is an am radio show near Salem, Oregon that only plays the best material from comedians live on stage.

Other than that, the level of dishonest hatred and straight up pro-oligarch corruption and xenophobic white dudes brainwashing people to support the Trump agenda never seems to decrease, always seems to increase. So all those losers trained to vote against their own interests would benefit if their next car didn't have a radio. Of course those same people made themselves so broke by who they voted for they won't probably ever again be able to afford a new car.

 

I have a $5 plan from xm

I use Radio App to listen to remote stations anywhere

 

Neat, I haven't seen that deal. Perhaps they have some un-advertised rates? Maybe worth calling them...

I've used the Radio Garden app to find good European stations.

 

i've had free xm twice, never found anything to make it worthwhile. the longer you hold out on signing up, the cheaper it gets

 

I wasn't impressed by Sirius XM. The Latin music stations I tried seemed to just repeat the same 3 songs over and over again.

I think if I were to go with a subscription of some sort, it would be Apple Music.

I don't like the targeted ads that sometimes seem to last an excesive amount of time with free versions of apps. So in reality, I only have Youtube Music on my phone, and that's only because it came with it (Android phone). I don't thing I've used it more than three or four times ever since Youtube Music came out.

I'm more of a purchase-a-CD-and-rip-it-to MP3s kind of guy. Which is getting harder to do as fewer people still rip CDs which in turn means fewer reasons for companies to keep supporting apps that either can rip CDs or play MP3s.

 

perhaps car radios will go out with a whimper

 

Well, my use for 'radio' in general is to listen to instrumental music.

As soon as I hear somebody singing, or simply talking, I spin the dial until I don't.

One day I was in a satellite-equipped rental car and I stumbled onto a channel that just plays elevator-grade smoov jazz. Which I don't usually prefer... but I didn't have to hear anyone singing or talking! It was bliss!

I kept it on that station for the rest of the long drive and liked it so much I'm now thinking about signing up.

Advertising-supported radio can't do this- they need to deliver a message, which means speech. So in that sense, 'radio' is long since dead to me.

 

I try to listen to local broadcast radio at times to get some local news. The same with local TV, which I just noticed I just missed the news I normally see. Oh well, I'm just not the type to just leave the radio or TV on, but should set an alarm or something to remind me it's news time.

At times I like listening to music on broadcast radio too, both singing and instrumental. But it seems to be very redundant, kind of like the Sirius XM stations I listened to. Also some of the creative TV channels are interesting, like ones about cooking.

However, broadcast TV and radio are dying. Our local TV repeater is scheduled to be taken down next June, so no more free TV. Now I have no way of watching the Super Bowl in 2027 and beyond. I believe they might also be taking down some local FM stations too at the same time.