New cars are losing AM radio (maybe not, revised 05/23/2023)

not really listened to AM radio since the thread started, but, I have listened to CDs more and more. And the fact that my DD has a 6 cd changer is annoying as far as wanting to listen to a given CD impulsively. We really can't have it all lol and to me a car that parks itself, cruises by itself, changes gears by itself, and streams audio and navigation, these just are things that I have 0% interest in....lol

I keep thinking back to the end of Training Day when Denzel washington is told, "Around here, you have to put in the work."

Of all the odd fads of the years, surely the resurgence of LPs is one of the oddest.
The sound degrades, badly, with each playing.
The dynamic range is far less than on CDs
The uniformity of response across the audio band is grossly inferior to CDs.
Mold grain noise, dust, and anything else that appears as a physical presence on the record surface goes straight to your ears.
In prepping recordings for LP distribution the engineers have to hold down dynamic range in an odd frequency-dependent way just to make the resulting recording playable--a form of intentional distortion.

There were good reasons LPs vanished so fast once CDs became available. I think the resurgence is driven by fashion not sound. To the extent it is driven by sound, that relates to choices made in the preparation of the audio for CD distribution, not inherent limitations of the format.

Not that any of this has anything much to do with POIs, GPS, Garmin, or such, but I triggered on a pet peeve.

From Motor Trend:
"Automakers want to kill it, but a bill is working its way through the government to mandate that vehicles retain AM radio capability, including EVs." https://www.motortrend.com/news/am-radio-new-cars/

I'm all for keeping AM radios but I'm not sure I want Congress micro-mandating. What's next, the number and types of coats of paint? What stations you can listen to (or NOT listen to)?

There is concern about public safety. Have you been in a room where all the cell phones go off with a message from the emergency alert system? Amber Alert? Critical Missing etc?

There are more important things that Congress should be doing!

First, the mandatory bad Tesla joke:
question: Why don't Teslas come with that new car smell?
answer: They have that Elon Musk.

I wonder if Tesla chose someone to represent their position who they purposefully chose because they had absolutely no idea of what they were talking about, or was that person chosen by incompetence.

"... Tesla further explained that "Specifically, electric vehicle drivetrains produce electromagnetic waves that interfere with the frequency of AM radio signals, which operate at a similar wavelength to the electric drivetrain. The resulting electromagnetic interference impacts the strength of the AM broadcast signal, causing severe disruption to AM radio transmission that makes the signal reception unstable and unusable." ..."

I'm not a good editor but I couldn't even begin to fix that.

Totally! I would rather have a CD any day than a vinyl.

CD players, along with AM radio, are also going away on new vehicles. These days, it's all MP3 on an SD card or smartphone.

And it won't be long before you won't be able to plug in your SD card/USB stick and listen to those songs on the car's "Infotainment" system.

They can't make any money selling subscription radio services if they allow you to bypass the revenue stream.

FM transmitter smartphone apps, such as "Quick FM Transmitter" will bypass the problem for Andriod users. iPhone versions will surely follow.

Apps like this will allow you to "broadcast" your MP3 files to your cars FM radio.

Bluetooth may continue to be an option also unless car makers block that function as well.

Sirius XM is such an aggressive marketing company, almost predatory at times. Every time I have purchased a new car that is XM enabled, the salesman has done me a "favor" by having the 90 day XM subscription already enabled for me. I then have to put up with months of unwanted marketing calls, free "giveaways" of extending the service, etc. I am always rude to them and make it clear I will not subscribe, but they still keep calling and emailing several times a week.

I recently purchased a new Toyota, and sure enough, here we go again! I did spend an hour or so scanning through the XM channels just to see if there was anything new in Sirius that would interest me. There isn't! Oh well, my free 90 days will be up in a few weeks, then the calls will hopefully start tapering off.

I definitely prefer to play my own music collection rather than trying to find a satisfactory channel on Sirius. That plus NPR on FM is all I need. So I sure hope the auto manufacturers don't eliminate the USB/MP3 capability.

I could only find one channel I liked, Bluesville, but it had the music on a rotation so you'd hear a lot of the same tunes at different times of the day.

My Jeep's info center allows 27GB of user space for photos or music. I have
nearly 1800 songs on the Jeep's hard drive. When you add my USB sticks I can have over 4000 commercial free tunes to play.

Could probably still connect phone by bluetooth and play content from phone. Such as CarPlay.

Sure, but then you have to put all your music in the phone's storage because the SD microcard option is disappearing from most phones.

I usually have Audio books loaded from Overdrive (library) on my phone playing in car.

But anyhow, that was not my point.

My point was, and still is, that car makers today are in on the money stream from subscription services and software package developers.

GM dealer told me in 2018 when I got my last new car, that CD players were removed for "safety" reasons. Drivers were distracted by using a CD player. So, how is that different than using the Infotainment center? Oh yeah, you don't have to "fumble" a CD from the case to the player. Geez, we are all idoits just waiting for them to make us safe, and pay them for doing it, because that Info center really drives up the cost.

Haven't listened to the radio/cd's in over 2 and a half decades. Usb flashdrive or bust! In the old days, I made data cd's full of mp3's. Today's multigigabyte flash drives can hold lots more. I update the contents once or twice a year.

Having music content on the phone is a pain for the reasons above. Last 2 new phones lacked a microsd slot. Streaming doesn't work if the phone is in airplane mode (which mine is when driving).

Thankfully, the salesman at my local GM dealer knows me and I get spared the "favor" of being enrolled with Sirius.

The marketing practices of Sirius XM border on being criminal IMO. Once they have your credit card, it is nearly impossible to cancel a subscription. Multiple calls just get ignored.

When I commuted years ago, I used to take advantage of their free & reduced rate subscriptions. I learned the trick of paying with a one use virtual credit card number and cancelling before the free trial subscription expired. That worked for a while until Sirius began threatening to report me as a non payer which would have affected my credit score. It took a letter from my lawyer to get them to back off!

It's a shame since in some rural, mountainous areas, satellite radio is often the only "live" listening option.

Its bad news. I always listen 680 News AM channel for traffic, news and weather in Toronto in my cars. I guess if they remove AM radio in new cars then we will forced to stream these stations which means more data usage on phone.

I really have had quite a different experience. They've had 2 of my credit cards, and when I called to cancel, I'd get an email while they're still on the phone.

I recently signed up our GM car again and it was 3 years for $99, and of course, with taxes and fees, $127. I now wish I had done 5 years because I'm really using the online streaming piece. Cutting the lawn, in the shower, etc.

The other car I did cancel when they wouldn't give me $4/mo. incl taxes and fees (yet they did maybe 5 other times prior). Got the same email confirm that it was canceled, but the receiver still works 3 years later. My mom also had this experience where the thing has worked for years. There are lifetime subscriptions and maybe they put us on them.