So, my Galaxy S4 Mini circa 2013 had a built-in FM tuner. It required wired headphones to work because it used the headphone wires as the antenna, and there was some reasonable little app to use it, like it was a feature in Samsung’s media player or something.
My Galaxy S10e circa 2019 also had an FM tuner, that also used headset wires as an antenna. Samsung provided no software support for it at all, the only app I could find that allowed you to use it was a long unmaintained third party app apparently intended for Southeast Asia mainly geared around some central aggregation service that maintained a database of radio stations so it could compare your GPS coordinates and a genre to automatically tune the radio. You could push the “rock n roll” button and it would look at where you were and go “Here’s the three rock format stations in your area.” That service was long since gone so it worked in a badly made fallback tuner mode.
My Pixel 10 Pro does not have a headset jack, or any FM tuner hardware built in. I don’t think iPhones ever had that capability, I think it was peculiar to Samsungs, and it’s gone now. So even if you used to know how to listen to FM radio on your phone, you can’t anymore. So you need another device, you need an FM radio in addition to your phone.
People would rather chew their hands off than carry a separate radio around, if they can find one. Have you noticed that the market for stereos is basically dead? The likes of Circuit City and Best Buy used to have entire departments for stereos, you could get boom boxes, bookshelf units or component stereos at a variety of price ranges. That’s ALL gone now except the very high end. Hell even the PC speaker market has taken a dive, Logitech still makes them out of force of habit, kinda like joysticks, but you’re supposed to wear headphones as a PC gamer now. You buy a sound bar for a TV or a bluetooth speaker for your phone, THAT’S IT.
For most of the public, FM radio is the button on your car infotainment screen you never push, next to the other one you never push labeled AM.
That’s quite common in the United States as well; I just typed the call letters of my local rock station into my web browser, it ran a duckduckgo search, top result was the station’s website, clicked that, the page loaded with LISTEN NOW in bright red 78 point impact font at the top. Clicked that and now I know Five Finger Death Punch is considered “Classic Rock” these days.
But remember, we’re on Lemmy. This platform has a selection bias for Linux users, soldering iron owners, self hosters. Those of us willing to put up with the slightest inconvenience. We’re not like most people.
For most normies, that’s at least three leaps too far. That required thinking. If you’re operating at the level of “make it not silent in here” then Spotify is the shortest path to ground, it’s the least number of screen pokes to get noise to come out. Going to the website of a rock station means launching a browser, running a search, considering the list of links, and then paying some amount of attention to the pages that load. That’s more than you can expect from the average unwashed mass whose check engine light burned out 30,000 miles ago.
And, honestly, I stopped listening to music on FM radio when Clear Channel bought every music station in a 100-mile radius of where I lived.
I still listen to NPR, but the music I listen to has been curated by me for 20-ish years now. I’m not complaining – I cater to my own tastes pretty well. But I’m probably missing out on new music that I would enjoy. I mostly find new bands when they tour with the groups I already like.
That’s a bigger pain in the ass than Spotify.
So, my Galaxy S4 Mini circa 2013 had a built-in FM tuner. It required wired headphones to work because it used the headphone wires as the antenna, and there was some reasonable little app to use it, like it was a feature in Samsung’s media player or something.
My Galaxy S10e circa 2019 also had an FM tuner, that also used headset wires as an antenna. Samsung provided no software support for it at all, the only app I could find that allowed you to use it was a long unmaintained third party app apparently intended for Southeast Asia mainly geared around some central aggregation service that maintained a database of radio stations so it could compare your GPS coordinates and a genre to automatically tune the radio. You could push the “rock n roll” button and it would look at where you were and go “Here’s the three rock format stations in your area.” That service was long since gone so it worked in a badly made fallback tuner mode.
My Pixel 10 Pro does not have a headset jack, or any FM tuner hardware built in. I don’t think iPhones ever had that capability, I think it was peculiar to Samsungs, and it’s gone now. So even if you used to know how to listen to FM radio on your phone, you can’t anymore. So you need another device, you need an FM radio in addition to your phone.
People would rather chew their hands off than carry a separate radio around, if they can find one. Have you noticed that the market for stereos is basically dead? The likes of Circuit City and Best Buy used to have entire departments for stereos, you could get boom boxes, bookshelf units or component stereos at a variety of price ranges. That’s ALL gone now except the very high end. Hell even the PC speaker market has taken a dive, Logitech still makes them out of force of habit, kinda like joysticks, but you’re supposed to wear headphones as a PC gamer now. You buy a sound bar for a TV or a bluetooth speaker for your phone, THAT’S IT.
For most of the public, FM radio is the button on your car infotainment screen you never push, next to the other one you never push labeled AM.
At least in Austria most nationwide stations have a web player and app so you don’t need a FM receiver
That’s quite common in the United States as well; I just typed the call letters of my local rock station into my web browser, it ran a duckduckgo search, top result was the station’s website, clicked that, the page loaded with LISTEN NOW in bright red 78 point impact font at the top. Clicked that and now I know Five Finger Death Punch is considered “Classic Rock” these days.
But remember, we’re on Lemmy. This platform has a selection bias for Linux users, soldering iron owners, self hosters. Those of us willing to put up with the slightest inconvenience. We’re not like most people.
For most normies, that’s at least three leaps too far. That required thinking. If you’re operating at the level of “make it not silent in here” then Spotify is the shortest path to ground, it’s the least number of screen pokes to get noise to come out. Going to the website of a rock station means launching a browser, running a search, considering the list of links, and then paying some amount of attention to the pages that load. That’s more than you can expect from the average unwashed mass whose check engine light burned out 30,000 miles ago.
My Motorola has that functionality, its neat. It lets me listen to local FM stations.
And, honestly, I stopped listening to music on FM radio when Clear Channel bought every music station in a 100-mile radius of where I lived.
I still listen to NPR, but the music I listen to has been curated by me for 20-ish years now. I’m not complaining – I cater to my own tastes pretty well. But I’m probably missing out on new music that I would enjoy. I mostly find new bands when they tour with the groups I already like.