Radio doesn't play music I like, doesn't let me choose the song I want, doesn't let me pay for a subscription to remove adverts, doesn't let me use playlists, doesn't let me play part of a song or rewind a song or skip a song. I understand the appeal of something like live radio, but it definitely doesn't fall into the category of replacement for a music library or streaming.

I use Spotify because I like their discovery service, large library, and the fact that they are simply the best client I've found for multi-device listening (going from office to car to headphone to home stereo seamlessly). I pay for Spotify because their service offers great value and ad ad-free, skip-free experience.

I hate the Spotify client overall, but the multi-device integration stuff is done so well If I'm listening to music, I don't have to think what device I am doing it from, I can just grab my phone, laptop or tablet to navigate/change songs and it works just like magic

Radio stations at least around the midwest here in the US only seem to play ~20 different songs, and it gets really repetitive, really fast, just ask anybody working retail.

Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads.

Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (and free hulu?) Any of the alternatives, deezer, apple music, etc would likely work too, but I can't imagine only using fm radio stations.

Most radio stations are crap, but the world is a huge place. Listen to say WFMU out of NYC and you will hear a very wide selection of odd stuff.

And most of that odd stuff is also crap. I value the ability to discover music that is relevant to my tastes.

I find novelty to be it’s own reward. However, that’s literally just 1 of ~100,000 radio stations out there. Spotify is decent, but if you want to try something else their really are great options.

Yeah haha, many of the Top 40 stations literally only rotate 40 songs at a time.

Because Spotify lets me choose which song I want to listen to.

That seems rather disingenuous. You don't know why people like to customize their music experience instead of listening to radio which they have no control over which songs play? Really?

Because radio is a totally different experience to having playlists of songs that I like and want to listen to

I saw this on HN awhile ago and thought it was pretty cool: http://radio.garden/live/guarda/altitude/

It's a globe you can move around and tune into radio stations all around the world just like you're talking about.

Any kind of ads are annoying to me and well worth the couple of $/month alone, but I also like being able to skip songs I don't like and having in general a better set of songs that I actually enjoy

I'm the kind that doesn't like to listen to ANY ads.

I don't want ads while listening to music, and I want all my thousands of weird songs I've added over the years on all my devices wherever I go

My favorite online radio is http:/radio.garden

It was once highly upvoted on HN.