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Comment by sempron64 | Hacker News Reader

All this requires to be true is that basically all Americans who are in a car weekly turn on the radio when driving, which is very believable. Some people also still have a radio in the kitchen of course.

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Is it? It's been years since I, most of my family, or my coworkers have turned on the radio (for non-Bluetooth audio)...my aging FIL insisted on it during a trip back in August (to much good-natured ribbing from his kids) but that's the last time I remember.

I do. There is local news on the radio that's hard to get anywhere else (OK, it's probably also broadcast via internet somewhere, but I'd rather not go through the hassle). It's also a inoffensive way to lessen the monotony when working in jobs dealing with the public (ie, minding a shop).

Really? You go through the trouble of hooking up your phone and starting your favorite app on a 5 minute run to the grocery store rather than just letting the radio be background noise? I totally get doing that for longer trips but so many of my trips are short enough they could be done on foot or by bike if my area was more friendly to that sort of thing.

Radio does the job for the few minutes I'll be in the car.

The phone automatically connects to the car and all I have to do is press play on the car touchscreen. Don't even have to take the phone out of my pocket.

I have to go more out of my way to turn on the radio in my car than I do to connect to Spotify. When I get in my car I plug my phone into the USB cable reflexively and Spotify starts up automatically. I’d have to fumble around with the settings on my infotainment system to even find the radio option (Mazda 3 2020).

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