Is The FM tuner obsolete?

In the US the FCC dictates the airwaves. 

My local Jazz station KCSM, struggles to maintain a high quality signal. 

Just running the electricity to power the transmitter is costly to reach maybe 100k listeners in the area? 

Economics will eventually dictate the future. 

akg_ca

FM broadcasts over-the-air is alive and well as evidenced by both (I) the auto industry and OTA station broadcasts in major centres here in NA and (2) also more so in Europe.

Annual revenue for radio totals about $10 billion in the US. It's a big business and it isn't going away anytime soon.

The DAB broadcast format in the UK is great … a shame it was a stillborn broadcast platform here in NA.

The US has never had DAB. We do have IBOC (so-called "HD radio") but that's not the same thing.

Nice tuners a really cool but commercial radio not so much.  I will go with streaming.

I started with a Fisher 50B. It DID NOT sound s good as my father's Sylvania that I recorded  offa.
Now I avoid broadcast radio always.

This is a real hard one as far as longevity. But clearly digital is here… Qobuz and the streaming services offer thousands of stations. With very good quality. You can find some tiny niche of music with dozens of stations dedicated to them. Also, you can get the stations you listen to now. Want Rwandan drum music? Check out all the Rwandan stations.

Good audio quality cost money… the more you can put in a single component the better it sounds. So why invest in a alternative box that can get a few stations when you could invest more in your streamer / digital side and have access to the world… thousands of stations millions of tunes many in high resolution format. I would spend every penny to get this stuff right. It is the future even if a few stations hang on for a couple decades… think of the business case:  a huge tower, power, maintenance, regulation…versus just buy an internet connection.