On a recent road trip back to my hometown in Southern Illinois, my wife and I got bored with not only the radio, but all of my CD's.  It's a four-hour drive, and it's a trip we make quite frequently.  Not only do I know every stretch of highway like the back of my hand, I know almost every radio station along the way.

Bored with the monotony of the same songs we hear all of the time, we got creative.  I had just purchased a car adapter that allows me to play music and podcasts from my Blackberry through my car stereo, and my wife had just downloaded the Pandora app for her Blackberry.  It was time to put two and two together to see just how good our listening experience could be.

What we discovered was that we could listen to a great mobile stream even in the middle of nowhere. Any issues in quality were more the fault of my Blackberry-adapter combo than from the Pandora stream.  I quickly realized that if my car stereo was connected through the Internet, not only would those issues go away, it would be much easier to access.  I would stream it all of the time.

And that's the way things are heading.  Audi just announced they are going to start introducing in-car mobile Internet.  Chrysler, Cadillac and Ford have already made plans and/or introduced similar products.

I recently wrote about how faster broadband speeds will completely change the way we watch television, and in-car Internet will completely change how we listen to the radio.

Will it kill off traditional radio completely?  Likely not, but at some point further erosion in traditional radio audiences will cause at least some stations to go out of business. Once your car stereo is connected to the Internet, and the price for in-car mobile Internet service becomes cheap enough that most people are willing to pay for it, it's only a matter of time before people switching their listening habits to a medium that allows them to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want.

It's a much better choice than the limited selection offered by traditional radio stations. In order to survive, those stations must innovate now. Otherwise, they run a very strong risk of going dark.