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Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

>... which almost no one listens to anyway?

"Traditional AM/FM terrestrial radio still retains its undiminished appeal for listeners – 91% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened to this form of radio in the week before they were surveyed in 2015, according to Nielsen Media Research. This data is derived from diary-collected listening information from a sample of over 395,000 respondents over the period of one week, as a part of Nielsen’s RADAR study."

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/audio-fact-sheet/

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You are quoting a mouthpiece for US radio broadcasters. That's a cherry picked measurement, it's clear while people still listen in cars, they listen less and less outside of their cars. Radio is losing listening hours every year and becoming less and less important, which is why smartphone makers have little incentive to support it.

The proof is in the revenues.

"AM/FM’s revenue from “spot” advertising (ads aired during radio broadcasts, its main revenue source) declined 3% in 2015, while revenue from digital and off-air advertising both posted gains – 5% and 11% respectively. This revenue pattern largely mirrored that of 2014, when spot dollars were also down 3% for the year"

I'm not quite sure that I follow your rebuttal. Are you claiming that Nielsen did not do a study of 395,000 listeners over the age of 12 using diaries? Also, could you help me understand why revenue declines for spot advertising has anything to do with the number of actual listeners to the radio on the FM band? Your original claim was that "almost no one listens to FM radio" but that's clearly not the case... failure to monetize the consumers have a particular media is not at all an indication of consumption of that media. 91% of Americans could be listening to public radio for all we know.

I listened to FM radio last week - once, for about 10 minutes.

15 years ago, I listened for an hour and a half a day. As a teenager, I'd listen throughout the day. Teenagers generally don't do that anymore - Spotify, Pandora, etc., have supplanted FM radio as the delivery channel of most music (and news).

The survey still records accurately that I listened in the last week, but I'm no longer a profitable listener. Advertising prices reflect that decline.

I'm interested to hear why people listen to terrestrial radio though (especially for people in the United States).

I stream BBC Radio 1 when I drive to work and I live in Bay Area, but I haven't found a terrestrial radio station that I would listen to.

Up until recently it was too expensive to stream anything on a HSPA/LTE connection in Australia. In Canada, even more so.

We have decent non-commercial options here on AM and FM.

Because I turn on my car, and without changing anything, the radio comes on. No batteries or data plans to worry about, and there's a decent interface that's integrated into my car.

I can get the same stations through IHeartRadio. I could get a phone dock, a bluetooth device to connect to the aux input (car doesn't have BT), an adapter for power (cigarette adapter), and all that. And I'd spend 20 seconds each car trip turning on BT, opening the streaming app and navigating to the station, fiddling with volume. I could stream stations from outside of my area, but I pick up worldwide news all day anyhow. My commute's for more local stuff.

I'm just not a fan of using my phone for streaming in general.

Also FM/AM reception feels like it's more robust than DAB/LTE/3g reception - often I can still listen to FM/AM in areas where other wireless tech black out.

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