It isn’t necessarily about instant gratification though, as far back as 8-Track folks have been able to choose what music they listened to which to me suggest that the instant I want to listen to x isn’t the driving factor. My personal money on the downfall of radio is that there are simply better options that fill the same niche, talk radio was replaced by podcasts and radio stations was replaced by setting YouTube to autoplay.
I say this all as someone who plays with and collects old tech, Radios biggest advantage was that it was cheap and wide reaching but was always on a losing battle. The second we were able to standardize a large scale format that could maintain relevence it was in many ways inevitably doomed, we standardized pretty damned well with MP3. My personal hope is that radio gets deregulated and gets absolutely filled with amateur and pirate stations, only radio station I ever like was a pirate station circa 2008 which played whatever folks submitted on his website I wish to see that everywhere.
Yeah gonna back you on this one, maybe I’m I’ve got a bit too much Scottish blood but the risks involved in it are too high and reliant on an inmate volatility. If ya have the extra cash to spare get a good pair of boots, tools, or equipment which are good investments the difference between a yearly replacement and a bi yearly replacement may very well be 30 bucks.
Also yes I am paraphrasing Sir Terry Pratchett.