FM is amazingly cheap, and green. You can reach millions of listeners with high quality sound. In many cases, you can reach tens of millions for exactly the same cost. Until you need another mast, the extra cost per user is $0.
Smartphone chips already include FM so there's no extra cost to reaching mobile users, with no extra bandwidth consumption. (Not FM's fault if some smartphone makers don't use the FM capabilities and make users consume expensive and limited cellular spectrum instead.)
The drawbacks with FM are (1) the limited number of stations and (2) users can't choose their own music. That's why there's a market for different services.
However, there's still a market for live radio: it's free and has billions of listeners. It's also a very efficient way of handling phone-ins and live commentaries on sports events, among other things.
Well, there is a very good reason to use analogue: it's already in place and working, and there are hundreds of millions (maybe billions) of analogue radios.
The problem is that attempts to introduce digital systems have generally not been successful.
If radio didn't exist, you'd obviously start digital services. But it does exist, and it's deeply entrenched.
Smartphone chips already include FM so there's no extra cost to reaching mobile users, with no extra bandwidth consumption. (Not FM's fault if some smartphone makers don't use the FM capabilities and make users consume expensive and limited cellular spectrum instead.)
The drawbacks with FM are (1) the limited number of stations and (2) users can't choose their own music. That's why there's a market for different services.
However, there's still a market for live radio: it's free and has billions of listeners. It's also a very efficient way of handling phone-ins and live commentaries on sports events, among other things.