Apple car play or XM radio

As others have mentioned:

- if your around cities you can use the radio (stations go in/out as OP mentioned)

- if your on most 'major' highways you can stream with your cell phone (until of course your out of cell phone range and of course it uses DATA which can be costly)

- if you can find a place to mount it, you can use XM radio but have to listen to whatever they are broadcasting (and its not cheap)

- while cars/trucks have moved from having just AM/FM to radio+cassette to radio+CD player to radio+CD player+Bluetooth you could simply feed CD's (with just audio or +10 CD's worth of MP3's stuffed on it) or you could load your cell phone up with a bunch of MP3's (most cell phones these days have at least 64GB of storage - 100x what a CD holds) and stream for free from your cell phone.

There are a BUNCH of options for car/truck audio - why your asking in a Truck camper specific forum is anyones guess...


- Mark0.

I replaced my old 2004 terrestrial/xm radio with a newer touchscreen unit with AM/FM radio, carplay/phone, gps and back up camera.

I mostly use the iheart app to listen to my favorite radio wherever I have cell service, otherwise just listen to the playlist or saved podcasts. If really remote, I have a portable weather radio for updates.

As a bonus, I also installed a backup camera on the TC connected to the new unit.

Grit dog wrote:
Oh boy, everybody grab their morning glass of Metamucil and listen for a sec.

LOL

I have the ala-carte programming on XM. IIRC it is about $8.00 a month for 50 stations, some extra pay. I have it on auto pay and I don't have to renew it or argue with them about renewing if you have annual plan.
bumpy

Don’t use XM, not even when it’s free. Despise their marketing with showing their price but leave out taxes, fees, and other costs. I recently replaced the low end radio (which included support for XM) with a touch screen unit with Car Play (and no XM). I can connect iPhone either by USB cable or Bluetooth/WIFI , listen to all my music on my phone, stream Apple Music, send and receive TXT messages via voice, listen to free radio, navigate with Apple Maps, and there is a “radio” feature for internet based radio services.

I will say the USB connection is more stable than the blue tooth as it seems to drop out from time to time.

If you don’t need all the features, and our existing radio has an AUX in connection just plug your iPhone in.

I had XM for a while, but I didn't feel it was worth a subscription. It also didn't work in a tree canopy for me. I don't know if they are better now.

I also like local radio stations when available, but there are a lot of places I drive that have no reception. For those, I download Amazon Music playlists. It comes with Amazon Prime, so it's no extra expense.

Fwiw, I've found that OEM Ford Radio reception of AM/FM is better than aftermarket radios. YMMV.

Thank you all for your comments.
Presently I think I will try to keep it simple.
I have the free Pandora on my phone so I thinking of just purchasing a Bose wireless speaker. and mounting it in the back window.
I do have Amazon Prime I will look into there Music .
The reason I posted in the truck camper Forum is because that is what I have.

Thanks & safe travels
GULFMAN