Most of FM radio is crap, but local and college stations are something special. Our premier college station here in town was a fantastic source of curated music. Mostly new stuff, but some really fun and interesting genre shows as well. The DJ’s served for so many years long that I felt like were were old friends. Then the college president abruptly transferred it to another public entity for some bullshit excuse. Thankfully we still have a couple of local, public, and college stations around.
OK, I’ve read enough!
I think your premise is flawed.
I listen to FM public radio (switch between CBC and NPR), commercial stations, and my own CDs in the car. I don’t subscribe to a service, and I’m not allowed to fiddle with my phone whilst driving so I haven’t quite got myself sorted to play podcasts that will last my whole commute. So yeah, FM public radio is my first choice when I drive to and from work.
I think I might mention this thread tomorrow at lunch. It would get a laugh.
Wow, I was really sympathetic to the OP’s point of view, but wow!, a lot of you still love your radio.
Me? Podcasts and audio books. I get some free satellite thing in my company cars, but as long as I have Bluetooth, no thanks. I guess all you all’s posts explain how that satellite company stays in business, too.
Another thing about old analogue formats such as FM is that they’re reliable, and when they do fail, they fail gracefully and can still be usable.
I have been listening to quite a bit of streaming music lately, and while it’s great to have all that choice, it’s maybe only 97% reliable, compared to 99.9% for FM radio. It may not sound much, but you really notice that 3% difference. There’s a lot more fiddling about, and a lot more technical glitches, with streaming. Sometimes there will be annoying drop outs or intrusive artefacts when the stream has dropped a few packets. Sometimes a favourite stream will be down for the day, or forever. Sometimes this particular version of Android won’t work properly with that particular version of an app. And so on.
Meanwhile, with FM, you turn the radio on and music comes out. That’s it. If the signal’s not the best, you can still hear the music.
The classical station locally is OK. I’m not a huge fan of classical, but there are no commercials.
Regular FM programming is awful. It’s all commercials, my tolerance for those is practically nil. At a certain age, we all know what we like, or where to get it.
1.NPR 2.I enjoy the choices that someone is making for me. For example, I drove two hours across southeastern Minnesota a week ago. How delightful to catch some low-wattage station halfway through run by some 20-somethings in Rochester, playing some jazzy funk, and when that fades out, some baroque something with commentary on MPR
…True, I almost never listen to the radio at home; and, true, even when driving it’s only about half the time (rest of the time is CDs or stuff I’ve put on an SD chip, including podcasts)…but there’s something about tying music and talk to the place you are in that still makes radio worthwhile.
Keep in mind that streaming isn’t always possible at work, as many employers prohibit it (my last employer did). And many can’t afford the monthly subscription cost of satellite.
But I will say that FM radio does seem to be trying to lose listeners. It’s difficult for me to listen to music on it due to all the sweetening of the music. I swear, if they sweetened it any more Taylor Swift could do covers of The Chipmunks.
What do you mean by “sweetening”? Genuinely curious.
“Sweetening” is an industry term; it means “add sugar to.”
- Mitch Hedberg.
almost everything we use to transmit information wirelessly uses radio. AM/FM, satellite, WiFi, your cell phone, Bluetooth, GPS, the key fob for your car, etc. all radio.
the differences are in the carrier frequencies and the kinds of modulation used.
[Moderating]:
I have no idea just how perfect the OP thinks they are, and neither do you. This post is unnecessarily hostile. Dial it back.
I have SiriusXM radio and listen to it most of the time but it has inferior sound quality (pro tip: don’t ever pay full price for SiriusXM radio; they will give it to you for $5 a month forever as long as you keep complaining the right way a couple of times a year). I use it mainly to listen to the BBC, Comedy Central and the 90’s station but the latter doesn’t sound very good even though the content is.
On the other hand, Boston area 100.7 FM rocks and comes in loud and clear in at least parts of 5 states. My preloaded MP3 CD’s don’t sound nearly as good. I am not a big fan of invisible waves from afar that sound much better than a disk I imprinted myself but it is a simple fact. Admittedly, it is blasphemous sorcery but it works and I can’t argue with that.
Full fidelity CD’s sound better than any of the rest but they only hold about 15 songs at best. That gets tedious after a couple of hours. It is a little strange how sound general sound quality has deteriorated over the years. I am far from an audiophile but I still can’t help but notice that SiriusXM radio and most MP3’s are just doing an impression of the original recording. I don’t have a high-end car audio system but even it is capable of doing much better than they allow for. FM radio is the second best choice after non-compressed MP3’s.
Since so many people are just expressing their own anecdotal preferences and practices, here’s mine. I do not own a “radio” in my house. There is, apparently, a radio in my car, as well is in recent cars I’ve previously owned, but I do not know if it works or not. I refuse to turn it on or allow it to be on when I’m driving. I’ve gone on two week road trips by myself, without ever turning it on even once, nor any other audio devices.
I like music, and at home I have music on my computer maybe a half hour a day. When I find something I like, I add it to my YouTube playlists. I have a few stations I live stream, none of them American, none in English.
Um, that didn’t help. What does it mean to “add sugar” to music??
FM music is free and I live in an area with dozens of stations that come in cleanly. Why pay for Satellite or bother with an Internet option?
In seriousness, I interpret it to mean playing more and more pop music, esp. stuff meant to appeal to tweens.
Yes, there is always FM radio, but the selection is very limited. Right now, I’m listening to 101.ru, which has 101 different channels, and I am one of 17 people, worldwide, listening to Второй Романс Демона sung by Николай Копылов on the Opera channel. Sometimes, in the evening (USA time), I’m the only person listening – it is being programmed in Russia just for me. That’s something FM can’t do. Or won’t.
It’s the industry term for speeding up the music to make room for more commercial time.