FM radio in the 2020s

I don't think I've seriously followed the radio since 2004. Probably should have given up sooner considering the state of pop music in 2003/2004 lol

I think it will still exist in 2029 but smaller radio stations are on their way out.

Yeah, I don't see terrestrial radio stations lasting long in several more years. Most people already have smartphones, and they can just listen to countless song-related "stations" on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, etc.

There's no more need to listen to corporate-controlled radio stations except maybe for talk shows, sports, or weather. But music? Nah.

I thought that was a great time for pop music!  Radio was also still pretty decent then.  I would say the downhill turn for radio really accelerated around the time ClearChannel became iHeartMedia.  You also had big companies like iHeart and Cumulus gobbling up all of the small, independent radio stations and small regional corporations around that time.

A similar thing has been happening here in Australia. Over the past four years, SCA-owned radio stations across the country have gradually been re-branded as "H!T" or "Triple M" stations (which are existing "capital city" stations). They all share the same station branding and music logs. However, now it has gotten to the point where even other regional radio stations are losing their own unique identities. One of my local radio stations (96.5 Wave FM) has the exact same music log as radio stations in Batemans Bay, Muswellbrook and the Gold Coast, cities/towns which are hundreds of kilometres away from where I live.

I think FM radio is largely going through the same transitional phase as what free-to-air television is. I don't see FM radio ever going way, however I believe the format itself will be reconfigured to adjust with the times. People generally don't listen to FM radio anymore to listen to new Top-40 music. What incentive is there for someone to wait to hear "Dance Monkey" on the radio when they could just stream it on Spotify? That being said, one thing that FM radio does have over streaming, at least at the present time, is that it is more reliable to hear breaking news or sports coverage. You still can't hear about say, the latest weather warnings or health alerts on streaming services such as Shazam or Spotify, whereas you can on FM radio. I think news and sports coverage will continue to work in FM radio's advantage. It gives radio a purpose which it might not have ever had otherwise.

In all honesty, I tend to think that FM radio in 2029 won't be too dissimilar to what it's like now. I can remember thinking back in 2009 that DAB+ radio would have become huge in the next few years, but here we are in 2020 and DAB+ stations still haven't been launched outside of the capital cities here in Australia. So I don't think we will have to worry about FM radio going "defunct" by the end of this decade. It will still be around, however it will most likely have an even smaller audience base than what it has currently.

Streaming is a pain in the ass in my opinion.  For instance, with FM you just turn on the car, the radio comes on, and it works.  I have an iPhone and when it connects to my car, it always plays the first song in my iTunes library no matter what I was listening to before.  It's incredibly annoying and I've been using FM more lately because of it.  Plus streaming uses data and FM doesn't.

I wouldn't mind switching to streaming if it worked as well as FM radio does and didn't have all headaches of buggy apps and buggy phone OSes.